Atlanta Tech Village has a coveted group of Advisors and Mentors available to Village startup Founders. They are a highly vetted community of people who have a wealth of experience, insight, and a pay it forward mentality. We strongly believe that every Founder should have at least one Mentor.
Advisory Board
David Lightburn
President
Karen Houghton
Vice President
Kelly Anne O’Neill
Mentor Coordinator
Mentors for Founders/CEOs
Steve Helsing
Andrew Steinberg
Greg Morrison
Shila Nieves Burney
Eric Levitan
Mike Burke
Kelli Ertel
David Hardwick
Chief Technology Officer
Aaron Hurst
Musaddeq Khan
Morgan Lopes
Katharine Mobley
Charlie Paparelli
David Payne
Andrew Shannon
Alan Urech
Geoff Wilson
Kim Wilson
Advisors
Dr. DeYonne Parker
COMMUNICATION: Leadership and Personal Development
Tim Dorr
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT: Architecture, Team Building, and Management
Patrick Wiseman
ENGINEERING: Product Delivery and Team Management
Kim Seals
Talent Management: Hiring and People Strategies
Erica Stanley
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
Ken MacMurray
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING: Build and ship software reliably and quickly.
Patrick Terry
ACCOUNTING: General Startup Needs
Andrew Tabit
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT: Lean Startup, Product Management, Software Architecture, and App Development
James Scott
CUSTOMER SUCCESS: growth, retention, and experience
A.T. Gimbel
FUNDING: Business Strategy & Venture Capital
Scott Lopano
FUNDING: Getting ready to raise - Business Strategy, Venture Capital, and Pitch Decks
Carl R. Johnston
LEGAL: General Needs of Startups
Nick Foreste
LEGAL: Venture Capital / General Corporate
Wayt King
LEGAL: Early-stage SaaS startups, financing
Yuri Eliezer
LEGAL: Patents, Trademarks, Software Licensing
Asia Matos
MARKETING: Strategy, growth, demand generation
Benjamin Rudolph
MARKETING: SEO/Pay Per Click
Derick Jaros
MARKETING: Digital Marketing & Business Model Strategy
Derrick DeCarlo
MARKETING/SALES: Messaging, Sales Team Development
Kerry Tracy
MARKETING: Strategy
Ricky Smith
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
Don Pottinger
Software Developer and Project Manager
David Kurkjian
SALES: Master Messaging
Mike Gomez
SALES: Complex Sales/Growth Strategies
Steve Bachman
SALES: Value Prop/Growth Strategy
A.T. Gimbel
FUNDING: Business Strategy & Venture Capital
About: A.T. enjoys spending time playing sports with his wife and three boys.
Bio: A.T. Gimbel is a partner with Atlanta Ventures, focused on helping entrepreneurs find community, content, and capital to successfully grow their business. Previously, A.T. led product and go-to-market functions for the Healthcare division of LexisNexis, as well as leading roles in corporate strategy and mergers & acquisitions. Prior to that, he was in consulting with Bain & Company serving clients across multiple industries with a focus on growth strategy, process improvement, and customer loyalty. He has also worked for several startup companies in sales and operations roles.
How I can help:
1. Fundraising
2. Business strategy
3. Go-to-market/Customer discovery
Alan Urech
Company: Stoney River Capital
How I can help:
1. The process and dynamics of growing a company from a fruit stand into a factory.
2. Make introductions and create networking opportunities for Founders.
3. Mentoring is to look at the whole person and their needs and wants, not just what they do.
Andrew Steinberg
About: Andrew is a family man, avid sports fan, golfer and foodie who appreciates all things local (except bourbon).
Bio: Andrew is the Founder and Managing Partner of Phoenix Capital Ventures, a VC firm focused on early stage and scaling sports, media and lifestyle properties. He has over 20 years of success operating properties in these verticals and has worked with organizations in the NBA, MLS, NCAA and at Nike amongst others.
How I can help:
1. Sharing my experience and industry knowledge.
2. Leveraging your network.
3. Providing an unbiased POV and constructive feedback.
Andrew Tabit
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT: Lean Startup, Product Management, Software Architecture, and App Development
Company: LeanSquad
How I can help:
1. Business: How to apply Lean Startup principles to customer discovery & development process.
2. Product Management: Shape their product roadmap based on customer development outcomes.
3. Technology: Help startup co-founders (especially non-technical co-founders) with technology choices (how to build what they want to build, how to organize their team and development process)
Asia Matos
MARKETING: Strategy, growth, demand generation
Company: DemandMaven
How I can help:
1. Go-to-market strategy: I can help answer questions around how to take your product to new markets, define your positioning and messaging, and find product-market fit.
2. Growth (Acquisition, activation, & retention): Growth is a company-wide effort, and involves marketing, sales, customer success, product, engineering, and more. I can shed some light on the process of defining your growth strategy across the entire customer lifecycle.
3. Demand generation: How to get more customers, how to design campaigns they’re going to love and build meaningful relationships with customers — and of course grow!
Benjamin Rudolph
MARKETING: SEO/Pay Per Click
Company: Relevance Advisors
How I can help:
1. Pay Per Click/Google Ads: How to set up a Google Ads account and drive pay per click traffic to your website.
2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): How to optimize their website for free traffic from search engines and set up a free Google Search Console account.
3. Google Analytics: How to set up a free Google Analytics account and understand what is happening on their website.
Carl R. Johnston
LEGAL: General Needs of Startups
Company: FisherBroyles LLP
About:
1. Legal issues of start-ups (customer agreements, contractor agreements, protecting your intellectual property, founder agreements, equity grants, etc.).
2. Funding strategy and negotiation (choosing the right funding vehicle, how to approach investors, negotiating term sheets and investment documents).
3. Overall business strategy and business planning.
David Kurkjian
SALES: Master Messaging
Company: MasterMessaging
About:
1. Identify your Value Positions so that you can communicate high value in your marketing and sales conversations.
2. Help increase your conversion rates in your sales process through higher value sales conversations.
3. Build a unique business development campaign to create predictable lead generation.
Derick Jaros
MARKETING: Digital Marketing & Business Model Strategy
About: Derick is married and has 2 kids (6 year old girl and 4 year old boy) and we reside in Chamblee with our dog Dakota. He enjoys all things Minnesota sports, golf, beach and business related (nothing like a good business biography on the beach).
Bio: Derick is GM / eCommerce lead for Pratt Industries. He enjoys helping large companies think like startups, and trying to even the playing field a bit with silicon valley. Proven leader in understanding general business landscapes from strategic perspective, and then knowing how to hire and manage a team to drive sales using an enjoyable customer experience with solid digital marketing.
How I can help:
1. Business Strategy (Target Customer, Competitive Assessment, market sizing, M&A, etc)
2. Product (User) Feedback (UX/UI type stuff)
3. Digital Marketing plans
Derrick DeCarlo
MARKETING/SALES: Messaging, Sales Team Development
Company: DeCarlo Management Systems
How I can help:
1. Go to market strategy: It’s all about communication a solution for the client.
2. Understanding marketing & advertising – especially decoding the myths about digital advertising and how to get the biggest bang for your buck.
3. Customer acquisition/Sales Development: how to get your first customer, your 10th, your 100th while building a successful sales team.
Don Pottinger
Software Developer and Project Manager
Don is a Full-stack Software Developer and Entrepreneur. He is a SaaS-enthusiast currently focusing on the intersection between marketing automation and machine learning. He is the current Founder and CEO of Lytham Labs, CEO of Kevy, and a proud graduate of Georgia Tech. His specialties are:
- Software development with expertise in Ruby/Rails and Javascript
- Technical architecture design including scaling and containerization with Docker on AWS / Digital Ocean
- SaaS – MVPs, marketing automation, and engineering management
Dr. DeYonne Parker
COMMUNICATION: Leadership and Personal Development
About:Dr. DeYonne Parker, affectionately known as Dr. Dee, is the proud mom of two handsome young men. She loves encouraging the fearful dreamer, eating popcorn at any time of the day and is a raving fan of Marvel superhero movies!
Bio: Dr. DeYonne Parker, Vice President of Gem Makers, LLC., is a multi-national author, speaker, and expert facilitator. She is on a mission to empower and equip ladies, leaders and little girls around the world to gain the clarity, confidence, and courage to SHINE in their Brilliant Zone. With over 20 years of experience in global leadership development, personal coaching and business consulting, Dr. Parker has a proven track record of creating strategic and custom learning solutions, strengthening the leadership muscles of globally diverse leaders and deploying learning experiences across North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
How I can help:
1. Move from cloudy to CLARITY (business strategy, vision mapping, customer discovery).
2. Move from critical to CONFIDENT (presentation, storytelling & pitching).
3. Move from comfort to COURAGE (strategic action planning, leadership development).
Eric Levitan
About: Executive, tech entrepreneur, advisor and passionate music lover that is trying to make a difference in the world.
Bio: Eric is the CEO of Vivo and a proven leader skilled in growing technology companies. He loves building businesses, solving problems, and creating a culture of engagement where employees love coming into work every day. He has a track record of creating operational efficiency, strong client relationships, and employee engagement.
How I can help:
1. Employee engagement. Create a culture where employees are the centerpiece and watch as productivity, sales and customer service thrive.
2. Operational efficiency. Understand how to structure your organization and create repeatable processes so that you don’t rely on a few employees to do everything. You need to position your organization to be able to scale and support the growth you’re going to get.
3. Leadership. Leadership is not necessarily intuitive; it is a skill to be learned and developed.
More Info: LinkedIn | Website | Startup Website
Greg Morrison
About: Greg is an avid golfer and wine enthusiast.
Bio: Greg is the retired Senior Vice President and Corporate Chief Information Officer for Cox Enterprises, Inc. Cox Enterprises is a leading communications, media and automotive services company with revenues exceeding $22 billion and approximately 60,000 employees. Greg served eighteen years as corporate CIO of Cox Enterprises. He was responsible for delivering all information technology and cyber security solutions. He is known for authorship of large-scale business transformations, key technology deployments that accelerate the digitization of manual business processes, a commitment to career path modeling of IT professional and his passion for diverse leadership teams.
How I can help:
1. Sourcing & hiring
2. How to navigate large enterprises/companies to best introduce and expose your capabilities
More Info: LinkedIn
James Scott
CUSTOMER SUCCESS: growth, retention, and experience
Company: SuccessHacker
About: James is a Top 100 Customer Success Strategist and General Partner at SuccessHACKER where he helps companies keep customers for longer and increase the revenue that each customer generates. With over a decade of hands-on operational experience building customer-facing organizations in early stage subscription businesses, James is fanatical about improving customer outcomes and experiences. He will tell you that there’s no more powerful growth engine than one fueled by successful customers who then go on to advocate for your product or service. Originally from the UK, James recently relocated to Atlanta from Silicon Valley, although he still hangs onto an unhealthy love of oil-soaked ‘chips’ in newspaper and beautiful (although not always the most reliable) automobiles. To wind down at the end of a busy week, James loves hitting a trail with his wife, two daughters and dog, practicing a little yoga, or watching his new team, Atlanta United.
Andrew Shannon
About: Andrew’s a passionate sports fan and when not working, you can find him running the streets of Atlanta, namaste-ing at Highland Yoga, and when possible, shredding on a ski slope. He’s a dad to a young daughter and old pup and married to a total badass.
Bio: Andrew is the Director of Emerging Technology for the Atlanta Falcons, Atlanta United, and Mercedes Benz Stadium. He is known for building and launching IoT and Data cloud products, leading teams, and working through tough challenges.
How I can help:
1. Business and people strategy: I’m great at business models and understanding market dynamics as well as team and culture.
2. Product management and go-to-market: I’m a good resource when you are doing long-range planning or sitting on a particularly thorny issue.
3. Wellness and interpersonal: I can help you think through how to best take care of you so you don’t burn out.
Karen Houghton
Vice President
About: I’m a bottom line, people-connecting relationship builder who desires to help others find their purpose, grow professionally, and navigate complex environments. I am a proud mom who is a big supporter of more diversity in tech, skilled communication, and a strong company culture.
Bio: Karen Houghton is the Vice President of Atlanta Tech Village. The Village is America’s 4th largest tech hub, housing over 300 technology startups and 1000+ members in 103,000 square feet. From curating memberships resulting in $5M+ annual revenue to spearheading marketing initiatives, organizing events, and connecting with investors and sponsors, Karen helped build this community from the ground up. She strives to create a positive and supportive culture while promoting faster connections between ideas, capital, and talent.
Karen is a relationship builder who holds a Masters Degree in Psychology. Previously she worked in a business consulting firm, and was the Founder of a non profit called the Do Good Initiative. She is passionate about well crafted emails, paying it forward, and helping technology startups on their quest to change the world.
Katharine Mobley
About: Katharine is an Atlanta native, mother of two teenage boys, and a marketing maven. She is passionate about branding, bourbon, and the beach.
Bio: Katharine Voyles Mobley is an award-winning marketer with technical DNA. Her branding methodology and proven track record of driving revenue growth is highly sought by organizations from global brands to technology startups. Currently, Katharine serves as Chief Marketing Officer for First Advantage, the global leader in background screening with 26 locations and over 4,000 employees worldwide.
How I can help:
1. Raising Angel funding, Series A, B, & C.
2. Marketing positioning and messaging, specifically for pitch decks, business development, and partnerships.
3. Developing thought leadership and industry expertise positioning for founders and executive staff.
Kelli Ertel
About: Kelli is a mom of two, who loves to travel, hike and read. She is passionate about building strong teams, top-notch execution and list making.
Bio: Kelli is a strategy and execution executive, with global leadership experience in sales effectiveness, human resources, organizational development and program management. She leads initiatives ranging from M&As to new product design and implementation to technology transformations.
How I can help:
1. Strategy and strategy execution – building goals, setting your priorities, and ensuring successful delivery of your most important objectives
2. People and culture – building top teams, strengthening company culture and growing in leadership to accelerate your growth
3. Designing scalable, efficient and effective operations – making ideas a reality through actionable steps and repeatable systems
More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website
Ken MacMurray
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING: Build and ship software reliably and quickly.
About: Ken is a trained philosopher turned software engineer. He enjoys thinking about humans and technology.
Bio: Ken started his career in the earliest days of ATV at BetterCloud. He has seen the team grow from 7 to 70+ software engineers and has learned a great deal about how to build and ship software reliably and quickly in a scalable way.
How I can help:
1. Cloud native architectures
2. Continuous delivery best practices
3. Infrastructure as code and test automation
More Info: LinkedIn
Kim Wilson
About: Kim is a journalist turned entrepreneur who successfully founded, grew and sold her startup – AND had three babies – all within the past few (chaotic) years. Her husband Geoff is an ATV Mentor too!
Bio: Kim is an experienced Founder and CEO, having successfully exited her most recent start-up: Social News Desk (SND). As a former-journalist, Kim saw a problem in her own industry and solved it by creating a SaaS company which would go on to become the worldwide leader in social media solutions for local news. In 2014, Kim led Social News Desk through an acquisition by Graham Holdings (NYSE:GHC); a public company which was founded by Katharine Graham, the first female Fortune 500 CEO. Today, Kim remains at the helm of Social News Desk, overseeing an entirely remote team and supporting more than 30,000 journalists worldwide.
How can I help:
1. Sales Strategy for early-stage SaaS
2. Optimizing Development Roadmaps
3. Pitch Deck Feedback
Mike Burke
About: Mike is a musician, braves fan and father of 3 daughters. His wife and he are avid cyclists and like to tour the U.S. in their RV.
Bio: Mike is a serial entrepreneur in B2B SaaS healthcare technology/patient experience. He founded Dialog Medical – the leading provider of Informed Consent systems – and sold it to Standard Register (NYSE: SR) in July 2011. He founded Clockwise.MD -the leading virtual queue for healthcare – and sold it to Warburg Pincus/DocuTAP in April 2017. He is currently founder and CEO of Copient Health.
How I can help:
1. Customer Discovery.
2. Customer Development.
3. Building a repeatable, scalable sales model.
Mike Gomez
SALES: Complex Sales/Growth Strategies
Company: Allegro Consulting
How I can help:
1. Conduct a candid review of and share feedback on your growth strategy or startup business plan. Do you have one?
2. Reveal the “secret” to achieving a high win-rate in the the complex sales (to corporation, governments, universities, etc…) environment.
3. Share 16-years of experience consulting elusively for privately-held businesses: how they grow and how to avoid the common pitfalls that lead to failure.
Patrick Terry
ACCOUNTING: General Startup Needs
Company: Windham Brannon
How I can help:
1. Assist with entity selection, set up of initial accounting processes, and understanding of fundamental financial acumen.
2. Identify and obtain all necessary licenses and permits.
3. Begin modeling financial forecast for prospective investors.
Patrick Wiseman
ENGINEERING: Product Delivery and Team Management
About: Patrick is a founder with a maker’s mentality. He is passionate about startup operations, technology, and diversifying tech. He’s a straight talker and a champion for fellow founders.
Bio: Patrick is the Co-Founder of Spaceship a delivery platform for SaaS applications and the CEO of Deft Services a consultancy focused on helping technical leaders guide their teams to quicker delivery with fewer bugs. Patrick is twice a graduate of ATV with a focus on high-growth teams. During his tenure at SalesLoft the product delivery organization grew 200% over 18 months and adopted processes that allowed them to ship dozens of times a day. At that time, SalesLoft was recognized at the 7th fastest growing company in North America by Deloitte in its Fast500 rankings. During his tenure at Calendly the product delivery organization moved from a monthly release schedule to daily updates and grew 150% over one year.
How I can help:
1. Optimize your end-to-end product delivery process
2. Technical recruitment strategy
3. Business operations
Kelly Anne O’Neill
Mentor Coordinator
Kelly Anne was born and raised in Milton, GA and yes- she does have two first names. A proud graduate of the University of Alabama, she is the only roll tide in a sea of red and black in her household. As the Community Development Manager, Kelly Anne is the the genius behind the Village snapchat, an epic tour giver, and the ultimate recruiter of talent for the Village. She works with Universities, sponsors, and runs our Mentor and Advisor program. Kelly Anne is sharp as a tack, a natural relationship builder, and passionate about connecting students to startups. Oh, and on a perfect night, she is sitting on a porch eating appetizers with good company.
Scott Lopano
FUNDING: Getting ready to raise - Business Strategy, Venture Capital, and Pitch Decks
About: Scott is a father of two boys under two, so you may see him snagging a nap in the lobby at any time. He loves coffee, cocktails, and anything with a good story behind it.
Bio: Scott is the Principal at Tech Square Ventures, an early stage venture firm in Atlanta. He sources, conducts diligence, and invests in leading high growth tech companies in the Southeast. He knows how to clarify business milestones and line up funding accordingly. He is focused on helping founders find a repeatable and scalable go-to-market strategy.
How I can help:
1. Fundraising strategy
2. Business model
3. Go-To-Market strategy
Shila Nieves Burney
About: Shila is mom and wife who loves spending time with her family. She is passionate about people, community and entrepreneurship. Connecting is her super power!
Bio: Shila Nieves Burney has spent a 20+ year professional career working closely with leading organizations and exceptional talents to create solutions that address disparities through investment in human capital. Her super-power is connecting! After spending a year sourcing investors for a startup that culminated in a $5M term sheet, mentoring and advising founders of color, Shila was able to see first hand challenges founders of color face getting access to capital and the resources they needed to grow and scale their companies. She founded ZANE Venture Fund, a seed fund that would invest in underrepresented founders with the goal of closing the funding gap and generating high returns for investors, and the Founders RoadMap Forums to bring the needed resources to the entrepreneurs in their own backyard.
How I can help:
1. Operations management
2. Organizational support
3. Connecting to move the needle for work and community
More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website
Steve Bachman
SALES: Value Prop/Growth Strategy
Company: Hi Tech Partners
About: Steve is a serial entrepreneur, sales professional, CEO, and angel investor with 35+ years of experience selling and running tech product and services start-ups. Villagers looking to start or expand their sales efforts, accelerate corporate growth, increase shareholder value, or solve a hard problem should leverage Steve’s experience. Villagers looking to close their first sales should join Steve’s workshops on “Closing you first 10 sales” and “Hiring your first sales person”.
Steve Helsing
About: Steve is married and a father of five living in Roswell; he has now officially been an entrepreneur in 4 decades.
Bio: Steve is a Co-Founder and COO of Accord Systems. He has started or been part of the management team that started and sold multiple businesses. With a focus on human resources and insurance technology, Steve understands the business models and opportunities that exist in this sector for innovative start-ups.
How I can help:
1. Help a team focus on the right things.
2. Setting a customer centric culture.
3. Create operational disciplines now not later.
Tim Dorr
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT: Architecture, Team Building, and Management
About:Tim is a technical founder of numerous startups, including SalesLoft, Showcase IDX, and Spaceship. He also apparently likes the letter “S” a lot.
Bio: Tim is a co-founder of SalesLoft, former Entrepreneur in Residence at Georgia Tech’s ATDC, CTO and CEO of several startups, a participant in the Flashpoint accelerator at Georgia Tech, and founded and sold his first company in his 20s. He is currently working on a new startup, Spaceship, in the DevOps/DevTools space.
How I can help:
1. Technical questions
2. Team building and leadership
3. General business strategy
Wayt King
LEGAL: Early-stage SaaS startups, financing
Company: FisherBroyles
How I can help:
1. I was a software founder (N2 Broadband) myself; after several near-death experiences we eventually “made it” and sold for a nice $$ exit after raising a bunch of VC money. Been there, done that, and can relate to the psychological demands on founders (that’s the hard part, IMHO).
2. I’m a lawyer for several SaaS startups, including several current and former villagers like Rigor, BridalLive, Terminus, SalesLoft, Calendly. I also represent ATV and Atlanta Ventures. So I can help startups avoid big mistakes and big expense by helping them keep it simple.
3. I’m old. It kinda sucks being old, but it means I’ve been around the tech community for a long time, seen a lot of ups and downs, done plenty of angel investing myself, and have learned a lot. I enjoy passing that on and helping early-stage startups.
Yuri Eliezer
LEGAL: Patents, Trademarks, Software Licensing
About: Yuri is a patent attorney, tech entrepreneur, and a deal maker.
Bio: Yuri started his career in 2005 drafting technical specifications for inventors and their companies. Over the years, he progressed his career to managing international patent portfolios for the biggest patent filers in the world. In 2013, he left the big firm life and co-founded Founders Legal, right here in the village! His law firm is one of the most advanced technology focused law firms in the nation, and have licensed their proprietary software to law firms nationwide.
How I can help:
1. Patents
2. Trademarks
3. Licensing
4. IP Valuation/asset planning