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.
If you are interested in applying to be a part of our 2022 program, please read more about our mentor and advisor programs and then submit an application here:
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
About: Aaron is a proud father of three who loves spending time with family, cooking and watching Pittsburgh and Georgia Tech sports.
Bio: Aaron enjoys helping founders unlock the most effective levers for growth as the Managing Director of Endeavor Atlanta, a global non-profit that selects and supports founders of the fastest growing companies in the Southeast. He has deep technology experience with strengths in strategy, product development, finance and operations.
How I can help:
1. Go to market strategy planning: you’ve found product-market fit, now what?
2. Preparing to raise capital.
3. Leading and managing a growing team.
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.
About: Allison is an entrepreneur, mom of 3, dog mom of 2 and wife of 1. In the fall she can be found at UGA football games and in the summer she can be found at Bethany Beach.
Bio: Allison O’Kelly is the Founder and CEO of Corps Team / Mom Corps and talent acquisition expert who partners with CEOs, executives, and hiring managers to recruit exceptional direct hire, project based and contract talent into their organizations. Allison had grown her business from an idea to a search and staffing firm that has placed thousands of professionals in companies nationwide. Prior to Corps Team / Mom Corps, Allison was a CPA with KPMG in Atlanta, and was in a Leadership development program with Toys R Us where she served in various roles including launching the original Babiesrus.com site and running the Alpharetta, GA store.
Allison has been recognized in the news media (TODAY Show, Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes) and awarded on a national level (EY Winning Women, Working Mother, Inc. 500, Conference Board). Allison was named a Global Power 150 Women in Staffing, by Staffing Industry Analysts in 2020. Allison’s current nonprofit boards include the Alliance Theater, Harvard Business School Club of Atlanta, Galloway School Annual Fund, and UGA Terry College Emeritus Alumni Board. Allison received her MBA from Harvard Business School and her BBA in Accounting from the University of Georgia.
How I can help:
1. Talent Acquisition and Strategy: All things recruiting, strategy, where to post, how to hire, job descriptions, reviewing resumes.
2. Accounting: Prior to starting my business I was a QuickBooks pro advisor. I can fix anything in QuickBooks!
3. Pick my brain: As an entrepreneur myself, I love brainstorming, making intros, and sharing experiences.
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.
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)
About: Originally from Istanbul, Turkey, and decided to call Atlanta home over two years ago after spending 8 years in Seattle and Washington D.C.
Bio: Currently Head of Marketing at PadSplit. I have 15+ years of experience leading customer acquisition and customer retention efforts for high-growth e-commerce, SaaS, health-care, and telecom companies.
How I can help:
1. Growth marketing strategy
2. Customer acquisition & customer retention
3. Digital marketing & paid media
4. Marketing technology stack
5. Marketing analytics
About: Benjamin is a volunteer for the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance, for which he has managed a Google Grant since 2010. He usually is found drinking iced coffee, even in cold months.
Bio: Benjamin is the President & CEO of Relevance Advisors with expertise in Digital Marketing. He helps companies drive traffic to their websites, measure results, and optimize performance.
How I can help:
1. Learn SEO Basics
2. Set up a Google Ads Account
3. Set Up and Interpret Google Analytics
About: Bill sets others up for success, both personally and professionally. He enjoys an extraordinary marriage with Cesar and is only snobbish about coffee. Oh, and he loves a great challenge!
Bio: Bill enables leaders to reimagine their CRAP. That is to say, he develops Competency, improves Relatability, ensures Accountability, and advances Productivity. And, he has been equipping leaders for success for 25 years: people-leader skills, teams and psychological safety, change and resilience, and business goal clarity are his strengths.
How I can help:
1. Coaching for laser-like clarity and focus
2. Relating to and leading others
3. Honing interpersonal and professional impact
About: Carl loves to read (mostly history and biography), is a rabid basketball fan (go Spurs!), and loves to travel. He is the proud dad of a smart and handsome son who is a Georgia Tech grad now working for a tech company in Silicon Valley.
Bio: Carl is a partner in the Atlanta-based law firm FisherBroyles and has 35+ years of legal and business experience, including major law firms and in-house general counsel positions. He has spent the last twenty years helping tech start-ups and other SMB’s with a wide range of legal and business issues.
How I can help:
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.
About:I am married to the love of my life, Kathy, for forty-two years with four adult children and four grandchildren. Go Bravos! This is the year.
Bio: I started my angel investing career as Paparelli Ventures in 1992. I’ve invested in over thirty-five companies all in Atlanta. I focus on entrepreneurs because I have great respect for their vision, passion, ingenuity, and grit. I am an early-stage specialist. This includes the search for product-market fit, communicating your message, developing a strategy people can understand and works, building a discipline for execution and profitability. I am an active twice per week blogger to entrepreneurs focusing on their business and life.
How I can help:
1. I understand startups and getting out of the ground.
2. Help you put a fundraising strategy in place.
3. Guide you in discovering those first few customers.
About: Experienced entrepreneur at growing technology focused startups as both an executive and an advisor.
Bio: Founding CTO at BetterCloud, where I grew the technology team from 0 to 100 people. Equity advisor for two startups. Currently an executive for STORD, building out their technology and integrations teams while the company grows 10x. Experienced such rapid growth in my leadership responsibilities, that I needed a coach. I received so much value from that coaching, that I got certified as an executive coach. Let’s chat for 25 minutes to see how I could help you.
How I can help:
1. Coach on how to prove there’s value in your product in the cheapest and fastest way possible.
2. Advise on technology architecture, hires, and practices.
3. Sounding board for your toughest problems that keep you up at night.
More Info: LinkedIn
About: David is a 35-year sales veteran with success both as a quota carrying rep and sales leader in companies like BellSouth and CareerBuilder. An engineer by education, David sought after and discovered the secrets to his success by exploring behavioral psychology and understanding the science of human decision making. In 2012, he founded MasterMessaging to help clients increase their revenue by mastering the ability to elevate their value.
How I can help:
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.
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
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 is the co-founder of LanguaTalk.com, a language learning platform, and a cloud engineer at Google. Don bootstrapped and exited a SaaS marketing automation platform. Also, he is a proud graduate of Georgia Tech. His specialties include product / software development, technical architecture in the cloud, and engineering leadership.
His specialties are:
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).
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
About: Geoff is a true entrepreneur. He’s passionate about helping companies find, build and grow their next big idea. He launched his first venture at age 16, when he started a computer store in a shopping mall in Sarasota, Florida.
Bio: Geoff is the President & Founder of Three Five Two, an Atlanta based firm helping industry-leading companies find new market opportunities and build new products and services. He and his team have helped some of today’s most recognizable brands—including Microsoft, Nationwide Insurance, Cox and GoFundMe. Thanks to Three Five Two’s insight and consultation, clients have generated hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue. Inc. magazine has named Geoff one of America’s Top 30 Young Entrepreneurs, and his alma mater, University of Florida, recognized him as the Warrington College of Business’ Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Outside of his professional pursuits, Geoff passionately cheers on the Florida Gators, collects sports cards and enjoys spending time with his wife Kim (also an ATV Mentor) and their three kids.
How I can help:
1. Growth Marketing: How to get traction and acquire users.
2. Product Strategy: How to understand user needs/wants, managing dev teams, product roadmapping.
3. Life as an Entrepreneur: Surviving the ups and downs of startup life.
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
About: Jacqui is an avid startup supporter, innovation enthusiast and positioning, messaging maven. She enjoys a challenge, full-bodied cabs, hanging out with her furkids and rock/alt rock concerts.
Bio: Jacqui Chew earned her marketing chops in the highly competitive field of consumer lifestyle marketing. An award-winning story-teller, she switched over to the dark side of technology marketing and then startups almost 20 years ago. With more than 2 dozen – stopped counting after #28 – product and company launches under her belt, she was ATDC’s CMO-in-Residence until Oct 2019. Today, Jacqui serves as SVP of marketing at Avertium, the cybersecurity and compliance services company that startups, venture capital firms and mid-market companies turn to when they want a show-no-weakness approach to cybersecurity. More than 1200 companies nationwide rely on Avertium for managed detection & response, security consulting and HIPAA, PCI, SOC-2, SOC-3, GDPR, CCPA, etc., compliance.
How I can help:
1. Marketing positioning and messaging, specifically for pitch decks, sales and partnerships.
2. Developing thought leadership and industry expertise positioning for founders and executive staff.
3. Presentation coaching
4. Customer Discovery/Customer Journey Mapping
About: Jermaine is an avid reader, loves working out and roots for LSU and the Saints during football season.
Bio: Jermaine is the Founder and CEO of CCAW Automotive Group, a bootstrapped B2C ecommerce company in the automotive space. Jermaine is a leader with experience in building scalable teams, systems and processes. He has experience leading growth initiatives across functions that include Customer Service, Operations, Accounting/Finance and Engineering.
How I can help:
1. Thinking through what you want to do, why you want to do it, and how to make it happen.
2. Building scalable processes and systems.
3. Identifying goals that move the needle and developing specific action plans to achieve those goals.
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 son, daughter, and an old pup, and he’s married to a total badass.
Bio: Andrew is responsible for technical GTM strategy for the Google Cloud Platform. Previously he was the Director of Emerging Technology for the Atlanta Falcons, Atlanta United, and Mercedes Benz Stadium and spent 6 years as a product manager at Microsoft. He is known for building and launching IoT and Data cloud products, leading teams, and working through tough challenges.
How I can help:
1. GTM, Sales, and Product Strategy: I’m great at launching products that land well, both internally and with the market, designing sales teams and incentivizing them correctly, and building business models.
2. Product management: I’m a good resource when you are doing long-range planning or sitting on a particularly thorny issue. Think value props, personas, roadmaps, etc.
3. Wellness and interpersonal: I can help you think through how to best take care of you so you don’t burn out.
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. As a c-suite executive she has a broad tenure in marketing, communications and hyper growth for B2B and B2C enterprise technology organizations. Her branding methodology and proven track record of driving revenue growth is highly sought by organizations from global brands to technology startups. As CMO of First Advantage she was part of the executive team that successfully executed a major financial turnaround, drove industry-leading growth cumulating in the sale of First Advantage to Silver Lake Partners for 1.5B in January 2020.
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.
More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website | Personal Website | Instagram
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
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
About: Kerry is a corporate hippy that loves hiking, meditation, yoga, making kombucha and natural, healthy stuff.
Bio: Kerry has been in marketing for over 20 years from startups to Fortune 50 companies. She specializes in marketing strategies.
How I can help:
1. Creates succinct messaging
2. Helps with strategies to reach customers and message to them
3. Asks tough questions to help create focus
More Info: LinkedIn | Instagram | Website
About: Kim is an investor in early-stage technology, health care, consumer product, and media companies. The JumpFund has invested in more than 25 Southeast based companies since 2013, across our two venture capital funds.
Bio: Kim has more than twenty-five years of global expertise in human resource consulting, corporate and leadership roles. Kim’s experience includes leading M&A transactions, service delivery transformation, talent, compensation, benefits and recruiting program design, as well as technology development, selection and implementations.
Kim most recently was a Senior Partner with Mercer, responsible for leading their overall go-to-market strategies in Atlanta. Kim received a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from Louisiana State University.
How I can help:
1. People and talent management strategies
2. Strategic planning
3. Fundraising with angels and venture capital
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
About: Melissa’s why in life is making meaningful connections so people can flourish. Originally
a Mainer. She loves dancing, traveling, reading, learning, and anything woowoo.
Bio: Melissa is an Entrepreneur of a multi-million dollar, Inc. 5000 winning IT and software development staffing firm. She has successfully helped grow the majority of Atlanta’s fastest growing startups, as well has innovation studios and growing high tech mid-market organizations. She understands what it takes to start and scale a business, as well as hire the right people to get the job done.
How I can help:
1. Hiring- Optimizing your hiring strategy, process, and tools
2. Culture, People, and Self-How to integrate behavioral assessments to not only hire the
right people but to also use as a management tool within your organization-Most
importantly management of yourself!
3. Organizational structure -Vision and Values exercises to get it right. Systems and
processes to create clarity, accountability, and scalability.
About: Michelle is an Atlanta native who’s passionate about traveling, fitness, and her American Bulldog, Chandler.
Bio: Michelle is the VP of Revenue Operations at Flock Safety, where she was the first sales leadership hire responsible for building out the sales team and strategy. Prior to that, she led Marketing & Sales for another startup where she was also responsible for demand generation and partnerships. Her experience in Sales, Marketing & Operations makes her an excellent fit to assist with all things Revenue, especially in early-stage companies or more established orgs looking to enter new verticals.
How I can help:
1. Sales Process & Strategy
2. KPIs & Forecasting
3. Demand Generation
*Mike is not currently accepting new mentees
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.
About: Mike is passionate about cooking, fitness, college football (Go Auburn), and March Madness. He’s the only person we’ve ever met who once sold billion-dollar jet fighter aircraft for a living!
Bio: Mike is founder of Allegro Consulting , a business growth specialty advisory firm. He’s been helping metro-Atlanta private business owners and start-up founders build and execute growth strategies for 18 years. His focus is on strategy creation and sales process. Prior to Allegro he was an international sales campaign leader and program manager for aerospace giants Boeing and Lockheed. Disciplined adherence to sound business practices and utilizing a replicable sales process are his passions.
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.
About: Morgan enjoys coloring outside the lines of entrepreneurship, technology, and social impact to build human centered businesses.
Bio: Morgan is a thought-filled software engineer and entrepreneur who understands that deliberate, consistent progress over time is life’s greatest growth strategy. Regardless of his job titles, Morgan sees leadership as a choice, not a rank. He strives to make that choice daily and challenges others to do the same.
How I can help:
1. Aligning technology with business objectives
2. Solutions to improve efficiency as the business grows
3. Strategies to refine a go-to-market movement
About: MK is father of two who loves and lives soccer and startups. He is all in with Atlanta United and Manchester United. He is passionate about coaching and mentoring early stage entrepreneurs, specially the ones just taking leap for the first time.
Bio: MK is the Entrepreneur In Residence for the Main Street Entrepreneur program at Georgia State University. MK has started and exited two companies, and has led product and innovation teams at fortune 500 corporations.
How I can help:
1. Help with product,
2. Go to market and pitching
3. Story telling.
For an appointment please text: 678-427-6742
About: Nancy is a tech-lifer that is happiest when she helps others succeed, particularly women in STEM. She also enjoys her (too many) horses, renovating houses, and flying with her husband.
Bio: Nancy Cox is a maker, and competitor, spending her career building systems and teams across many industries (even NASA), but primarily fintech. As CIO/CTO for 15 years, she led tech innovation and business strategy for success in the highly competitive fintech space. In 2014 she became involved in Atlanta’s startup community and discovered “her people”: entrepreneurs. While CTO at Worldpay, she launched the ATDC’s first fintech program in 2015, and also found her new career mission. She joined Greenlight as employee #9, and as CTO scaled this young company to its next level. Now able to focus solely on the needs of entrepreneurs and women in STEM, she has “retired” to spend her time aiding entrepreneurs, through advice, networking, investing, and temp positions – whatever it takes to make progress.
How I can help:
1. Technology consulting: strategy, roadmap, general advice and people networking
2. Business strategy: objective review and advice for product/business strategy, customer discovery, market viability, go2market
3. Operational scaling: practical, realistic planning for how to go from zero – 100, running the business, building a team
4. Presentation/pitch coaching
About: Nandu is a marathon runner, neural artist, and aspiring paleontologist.
Bio: Nandu is CTO of KyckGlobal and President of ATL CTO. For over 20 years, in roles spanning IT, software engineering, and operations, he has followed his passion for truly agile–with a lowercase a—approaches to getting things done.
How I can help:
1. Software engineering,
2. Devops/sre
3. Process
More Info: LinkedIn
About: Nick is a father of four who loves to spend time outside with his kids. He is passionate about giving back and college football.
Bio: Nick is a corporate attorney at Morris, Manning & Martin, LLP, with a legal practicing focusing on venture capital and mergers & acquisitions. Nick serves in a de-facto general counsel capacity to many technology companies and tech-focused funds throughout the country. Nick previously co-founded a small technology startup and enjoys leveraging that experience, together with his legal expertise, to support emerging technology companies throughout their corporate life cycles: from formation and early stage funding to growth equity financings, acquisitions, and exits.
How I can help:
Legal guidance for tech companies with a focus on:
1. Corporate structure
2. Fund raising
3. Contracts.
About: Patrick is a hopeless optimist with a thirst for technology and how it can improve every facet of our lives, allowing us all to focus on those things that really matter.
Bio: As an audit principal with Windham Brannon LLC, a top Atlanta public accounting firm, Patrick leads their technology practice with a focus on wholistic objectives for businesses and its owners. Leveraging the experience of client’s success and failures, Patrick helps remove potential obstacles to enable greater success.
How I can help:
1. Assist with entity selection, set up of initial accounting processes, and understanding of fundamental financial acumen.
2. Develop financial modeling to tell your story.
3. Identify potential pitfalls in scaling your business.
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
About: Priscila enjoys spending time with her husband and their furry kid, playing golf or experimenting with new recipes in the kitchen (not always good enough to eat, but always a blast!)
Bio: Priscila Feijó Mattingly is an accomplished HR, Culture, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion leader. A Brazilian native with a background in Communications and Marketing, Priscila immigrated to the United States in 2004 with 5 words of English in her vocabulary and $500 in her pocket and it was in the process of reinventing her career in a new country that she became an HR practitioner. In the last 10 years, Priscila has served as Chief People Officer at Cortland, a multi-family Real Estate based in Atlanta, GA, Chief Talent Officer at Bridge Senior Living, a senior living housing company based in Orlando, FL, and in her current role, she serves as the Chief Human Resources and Inclusion at Trilogy Health Services, a healthcare company based in Louisville, KY. Priscila is also the founder of a consultancy practice – Pathway Culture, to help companies design and activate the culture they aspire to have.
How I can help:
1. Executive Coaching,
2. Culture Consulting,
3. HR and DE&I Consulting
More Info: LinkedIn
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.
About:Ricky is a nerd who works for fun in between video games. He loves to teach others and find ways to make hard concepts more approachable.
Bio: Ricky is a software engineer and general technologist with 20 years of experience and now leads operations and cloud automation at Rigor. He is well known for getting outside of the technical bubble and working with sales and business leaders to understand and use technology to be more effective in their roles.
How I can help:
1. Brainstorm technology pros/cons and help make decisions.
2. Review systems architecture, especially as they relate to cloud infrastructure.
3. Assist in soft-skills required when working with and hiring software people.
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
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
About: Stefanie is a boy-mom who loves dance, yoga, travel and personal finance. She is passionate about women’s issues, bravely living from your intuition, and anything that takes her back to her homeland of Puerto Rico.
Bio: Stefanie is the Founder & CEO of Powered by Verve, an investor relations firm focused on helping companies engage their existing and potential investors. She is Founder & Host of the She Conquers Capital Podcast and WOE | The Women Only Experience Atlanta-based event series. Contact Stefanie for advice on raising capital, crafting your pitch, connecting with investors, building community, public speaking, hosting events and anything to do with overcoming doubts and fears.
How I can help:
1. Investor engagement
2. Raising capital
3. Presentation/public speaking
About: Steve is a jazz saxophonist who loves selling and helping start-up founders get their first 10 customers.
Bio: Steve is a salesman at heart and loves to sell. Over his career he has sold more than $1B in products and services. When not selling, Steve is a serial entrepreneur, 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 revenue growth, and increase shareholder value via sales should leverage Steve’s experience. Steve runs ATV’s monthly Sales Meetup on the first Wednesday of every month at 3pm – check it out.
How I can help:
1. Sales
2. Partnership
3. Strategy
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.
About: Susanne and her husband enjoy exploring new restaurants, farmer’s markets, hiking, boating, and playing pickleball with their two teenagers. Susanne also loves solving problems, both big and small. Ask her about Ikigai, keeping a sourdough bread starter alive, or her Velvet Elvis
story to get things started.
Bio:
Susanne is a sales and marketing expert with over 20+ years leading customer teams. While managing multi million-dollar clients for Coca-Cola, she gained a deep understanding of how global brands innovate. Susanne founded MARNI&CO to share her knowledge and give early-stage companies a competitive edge. She specializes in teaching founders how to expand their network, develop sales and marketing plans, and navigate corporate partnerships.
How I can help:
1. Win New Customers – Go-to-market strategies, value proposition creation, and brand
communications.
2. Build Partnerships – Relationship building, customer meeting prep, and presentation
delivery.
3. Navigate Corporate Brands – Negotiations, constructing deals, and stewarding results.
About: Originally from Johannesburg, South Africa, I played D1 tennis in college and now Atlanta is where I call home. I enjoy traveling, exploring new places and meeting new people. I’m on the Board of Kula Project and the sideline reporter for a professional rugby team in New England 🙂
Bio: With 15+ years experience in driving results for hyper-growth organizations through process-driven, scalable and repeatable marketing models, Tami knows what it takes to drive awareness, engagement and immediate growth. Whether at the startup stages, accelerating hyper-growth following a fundraising round, or delivering world-class strategies as an enterprise behemoth, Tami has an insatiable desire to drive an innovative approach that fuels disruption. Tami is the co-founder of 31south, an experiential and disruptive marketing agency focused on hyper-growth companies. Previously, Tami joined one the fastest-growing B2B SaaS startups in the U.S. as the first marketing hire at SalesLoft to scale the marketing team and lead branding, customer marketing, content marketing, and lead generation initiatives across multiple platforms.
How I can help:
1. GTM strategy
2. Branding and marketing
3. Unconventional and disruptive marketing
About: Originally from Washington, D.C., Theia Smith has called Atlanta ‘home’ for more than two decades, after arriving to the city to attend Spelman College. An avid reader, traveler and cook, Theia enjoys discovering craft cocktails in other countries and is on a relentless hunt for the perfect pickle.
Bio: As the director of the Innovative Inclusion team for PricewaterhouseCoopers, Theia Smith channels her pioneering background in inclusive startup ecosystems to advise companies and organizations on how they can break the status quo and accelerate change with their diversity and equity goals. Prior to joining PwC, Theia launched the award-winning Atlanta’s Women’s Entrepreneurship Initiative in 2014, positioning Atlanta as the first U.S. city to financially invest in creating an incubation space and
curriculum, for early stage women entrepreneurs. Theia developed a first-of-its-kind blueprint to equip women entrepreneurs with unprecedented access in three core capital areas: financial, human and thought – to accelerate them from ‘solopreneur’ business models, to high-growth, job-creating ventures.
How I can help:
More Info: LinkedIn | Website
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
About: Wayt is a life-long ATLien, is the father of 5 kids, and spends time on Lake Atitlan in Guatemala.
Bio: Wayt is a startup lawyer who loves helping early-stage SaaS and software entrepreneurs. He’s been a software entrepreneur and an angel investor, and is known for keeping the legal stuff as simple as possible.
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.
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
