Startup Mentors

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:

• Fundraising/venture capital
• Business strategy
• Customer discovery

More Info: LinkedIn | Website

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. 

More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

About: Adam is a networking & branding consultant, tech founder, journalist, music entrepreneur, and the founder of The Zero to One Networker. With his trademark orange sunglasses, Adam draws on more than a decade of experiences in the music and tech industries to teach others how to cultivate powerful relationships using strategies of patience, consistency, authenticity, and value creation. He loves to talk history, music trivia, and all the movie references.

Bio: Adam began his career in independent music, developing a global network of relationships with artists, producers, & writers, and cutting his teeth in the music-journalism world before working on his own music startup. Among others, his writing has appeared in Crunchbase News, Mattermark, and Startup Grind, and he’s collaborated with a variety of organizations, including TechStars in late 2020. Over the last few years, he’s honed his “ubiquity mindset,” and successfully used a strategy of humor, humility, and value creation for others to form relationships with investors, journalists, founders, & influencers. Through his work in branding & networking, Adam has appeared numerous times on lists of rising LinkedIn influencers and teaches others how to create personal and masterful narratives leading to magnetic, long-term brands & relationships.

How I can help:

LinkedIn | Twitter

About: Alex is an expert problem-solver, hustling to help humans live better, and companies grow and scale accountability for better culture and People Ops outcomes.

Bio: Alex (she/her) is the founder and CEO of Laurl, an HRtech SaaS for employee relations, helping HR and People teams track and manage employee concerns that affect workplace culture and inclusion.

Alex is an experienced leader across employee relations, investigations, conflict resolution, diversity, accessibility, and inclusion. Alex has led over 300 EEOC and ADA harassment and discrimination investigations and mediations to date, and delivered 400+ trainings and keynotes for domestic and international tech, medical, legal, higher ed, government, and fortune 500 audiences. Alex has applied her deep knowledge in facilitation and policy development to strengthen workplace and equity accountability and investigations programs for 200+ organizations.

How I can help:

1. DEI, People, and Culture— defining DEI strategy, building diverse teams, and strengthening company culture
2. Storytelling— executive communication, speaker coaching, and company storytelling for fundraising, partnerships, sales, and recruiting
3. Early stage startups— identifying problems, value propositions, and building and iterating products

LinkedIn | Website

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.

More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

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)

More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

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

LinkedIn | Website

About:Currently, Bahadir is the Founder and COO of Cognira, located in Atlanta Tech Village. Baha brings together expertise in building scalable, data-driven technology solutions to retail problems.

Bio:

Bahadir has a proven track record of designing, configuring, customizing, implementing and delivering complex enterprise class planning, forecasting and replenishment software for Fortune 100 Retailers.

Prior to Cognira he has served leadership roles in multiple organizations in retail technology; Director of Product Strategy at Manhattan Associates, Senior Managing Consultant at IBM, Director of Program Management at Predictix (now Infor)

How I can help:

More Info: LinkedIn | Website

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

More Info: Calendly | LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

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

More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

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.

More Info: LinkedIn | Website | Blog

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.

More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

About: Chris is an early stage Real Estate & PropTech investor and advisor. His wife and 2 kids relocated to Chastain Park from the SF Bay Area in 2020. Chris loves sports (golf, tennis, cycling), the outdoors, and jamming with founders on startups, Real Estate, Proptech, and Logistics.

Bio: Chris is currently an early stage investor & advisor at On Deck. Chris scaled 3 startups to successful exits in proptech, logistics, and consumer spaces. He has deep expertise in Real Estate, PropTech and Logistics. Chris has taken companies from 0 to 1 and has helped founders with initial GTM strategies, hiring, contracts, new business lines, along with channel/distribution partnerships. He’s been fortunate to work closely with Proctor & Gamble, Greystar, Brookfield, Amazon, The Home Depot, UPS and more. 

How I can help:

LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

About: Claude is a Marketing leader, with over 15+ years of experience, leading and executing consumer driven initiatives across global markets and diverse industries i.e. Consumer Packaged Goods, Finance, Retail, Direct to Consumer and Technology. He is passionate about helping startups imbed marketing thinking at the inception of their journey to create brand awareness and customer growth.

Bio: Claude has held senior leadership roles at Coca-Cola, Voya Financial  and a number of other fortune 500 companies. Designed and executed digital strategies on the worlds largest stage from world cup to Direct to Consumer growth campaigns. Graduate of the Stanford E145 Technology and Entrepreneurship program. In addition to a long track record of helping companies achieve growth through marketing strategy he is also a student of design thinking, agile methodology and consumer research.

How I can help:

• Brand building based on consumer insights
• Help you define your digital growth marketing strategy
• Advise on performance KPI’s and marketing technology stack

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.

More Info: LinkedIn | Website

Company: Techstars

How I can help:
1) I’m very experienced with B2C startups and/or brand-heavy startups.
2) Helping a founder get from idea-on-napkin to product-market fit.
3) Any questions about accelerators (i.e. YC, Techstars).

More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

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.

More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter

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).

More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

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

Company: Google

How I can help:
1. Object Oriented Design and Architecture .
2. Interactive Strategy and Development for Mobile and Web.
3. 3D Application Development, Data Visualization and Simulation.

More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

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

More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

About: James is an Atlanta native who enjoys spending time with his wife, daughter and 3 rescue dogs.  He also enjoys running, an occasional backpacking trip and rooting for all of our Atlanta sports teams.  He is passionate about serving others.

Bio: James is a Managing Director at EY and has over 30 years of experience working with a variety of business.  He assists organization in thinking through their most strategic issues, developing solutions and connecting with other people with the right experiences.  He loves growing revenues, solving problems, and building strong client relationships.

How I can help:

LinkedIn | Website | Twitter

About: Jermaine is an avid reader, loves working out and roots for LSU and the Saints during football season.

Bio:Jermaine Brown is an investor and entrepreneur based in Atlanta. He’s currently a Partner at Outlander VC, an early-stage venture capital firm. He founded CCAW Automotive Group, a B2C automotive e-commerce company, and bootstrapped the company to over $10M in annual revenue. Jermaine has experience as a venture capital investor and building scalable teams, systems, and processes.

How I can help:

•  Identifying goals that move the needle and developing specific action plans to achieve those goals.
• Evaluating raising venture capital or bootstrapping.
• Building scalable processes and systems.

More Info: LinkedIn | Website

About: Jodi lives in Atlanta, GA with her husband, two little girls, and a big fluffy dog named Basil.

Bio: Founded in 2017 by Jodi Daniels, Red Clover Advisors is currently one of the few certified Women’s Business Enterprises, (WBENC), focused solely focused on privacy. Jodi is a Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP-US), National Keynote Speaker, featured in Forbes, Inc., The Economist, Thrive Global, Authority Magazine, Medium and also a member of the Forbes Business Council. She also hosts the She Said Privacy podcast.

How I can help:
1. Help companies comply with privacy laws
2. Help ensure that marketing efforts align with customer expectations & privacy requirements
3. Integrate privacy into the products & services to win over customers

LinkedIn | Website

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: Kathryn has been scaling Atlanta tech companies for over a decade. She tends to “Kathrynize” (a verb coined by the Rigor CEO) lots of ideas, turning them into actionable plans. Kathryn lives in Atlanta with her husband and two sons. She is a 7x Ironman Triathlon Finisher including two World Championships.

Bio: Currently, a partner at Atlanta Ventures, Kathryn has experience building top teams and repeatable, efficient business systems with a high energy, positive attitude. From being the 9th employee at Pardot, to serving at COO of Rigor, to being a founding team member of Drum, she has 15+ years in startup leadership with $100m exit, F500 acquisition, multi-year wins for Best Place To Work, Inc 500, Pacesetter..

How I can help:

• Customer Success (customer service, customer support)
• Operations & Scaling
• Hiring & Onboarding

LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

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

More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

About:Kim is a journalist turned entrepreneur who successfully founded, grew and sold her tech startup – and had three babies – all within the past few (chaotic) years. She and her husband, Geoff Wilson, live in Midtown Atlanta and are serial entrepreneurs who have founded, invested in, sold (and closed!) dozens of startups.

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

More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

About: Landon leads Marketing at Rocketplace, a fintech product in — ✨startup jargon incoming✨ — stealth mode. He’s an advisor for MaxRewards, Poppy, and Chant Media and mentors through Techstars Atlanta, Techstars Seattle, and First Round. He’s from Atlanta but has probably lived in your hometown!

Bio: Landon leads growth and for early-stage startups. He currently leads marketing at Rocketplace, a new SF-based payments startup. More recently he led growth, marketing, and operations at Plastiq (Forbes FinTech 50), Fancred (Techstars Boston 2013), and Wyndy. He’s an advisor to MaxRewards, Poppy, and Chant Media.

How I can help:
1. Growth marketing
2. Leadership & Culture
3. Fundraising Preparation

LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

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.

More Info: LinkedIn | Website

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.

More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

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:

More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

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. General Corporate Matters

More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

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.

More Info: LinkedIn | Website

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

More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

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

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

More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

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

More Info: LinkedIn | Website

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.

More Info: LinkedIn | Website | Website

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 of leading customer teams. While managing multi-million-dollar clients for Coca-Cola, she gained a deep understanding of how global brands innovate. Susanne enjoys sharing her knowledge to give early-stage companies a competitive edge. She specializes in teaching founders how to develop sales and marketing plans, navigate corporate partnerships and build collaborative teams.

How I can help:

• Win New Customers – Go-to-market strategies, value proposition creation, and brand communications.

• Build Partnerships – Relationship building, customer meeting prep, and presentation delivery.

• Navigate Corporate Brands – Negotiations, constructing deals, and stewarding results.

More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter

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 of experience in driving results for hyper-growth organizations through process-driven, scalable and repeatable marketing models, Tami’s expertise centers on go-to-market strategies, brand development, engagement and immediate growth.

Previously, Tami co-founded 31south and Summit House, a transformative creative marketing agency. Prior to her leap into entrepreneurship, Tami joined one the fastest-growing B2B SaaS startups in the U.S. as the first marketing hire at SalesLoft. She has also led Global Social Strategy for Women Who Code, the largest and most active community of engineers dedicated to inspiring women to excel in technology careers.

How I can help:
1. GTM strategy
2. Branding and marketing
3. Unconventional and disruptive marketing

More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter

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

More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

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.

More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

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

More Info: LinkedIn | Website