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
Karen Houghton
Vice President
David Lightburn
President
Kelly Anne O’Neill
Mentor Coordinator
James Scott
Program Lead
Technical Experts
John Pignata
Startup Solutions Architect with AWS
Erica Stanley
Software Engineering Manager
Ken MacMurray
Senior Level Software Engineer
Ricky Smith
Senior Level Software Engineer
Don Pottinger
Software Developer and Project Manager
Mentors for Founders/CEOs
Terry Bauer
Brooke Beach
Mike Burke
Jewel Burks
Ben Dyer
Kelli Ertel
Rachel Ford
John Gravely
David Hardwick
Chief Technology Officer
Aaron Hurst
M. Cole Jones
Titania Jordan
Musaddeq Khan
Morgan Lopes
Katharine Mobley
Charlie Paparelli
David Payne
Nick Romano
Andrew Shannon
Alan Urech
Eric Vass
Devon Wijesinghe
Geoff Wilson
Kim Wilson
Leadership Development for Young Professionals
Karen Houghton
Jim Berryhill
John Duisberg
Carlo Martinez
Eric Levitan
Jenna Rozenblat
Advisors
Patrick Terry
ACCOUNTING: General Startup Needs
Andrew Tabit
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT: Lean Startup, Product Management, Software Architecture, and App Development
James Scott
James Scott CUSTOMER SUCCESS: growth, retention, and experience
Ryan Peisel
FINANCE: Growth Strategy, Forecasting, Investor Decks
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
Michael Horten
LEGAL: Financing, Term Sheets, Angel Investing
Nick Foreste
LEGAL: Venture Capital / General Corporate
Wayt King
LEGAL: Early-stage SaaS startups, financing
Yuri Eliezer
LEGAL: Patents, Trademarks, Software Licensing
Kevin Sandlin
PITCHING: Perfecting your quick pitch
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
Lauren Patrick
MARKETING: Growth "Smarketing" & Storytelling
Josh Siegel
PRODUCT MANAGEMENT: Product Design/Go To Market Strategy
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
Company: Atlanta Ventures
About:
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.
A.T. holds an Industrial Engineering degree from Georgia Tech and a MBA from Harvard Business School. He also enjoys spending time and playing sports with his wife and three boys
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 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.
Brooke Beach
Company: Marketwake
How I can help:
1. Business Strategy: how to build goals, OKRs, revenue projections, go to market concepts.
2. How to prioritize marketing strategies: marketing is often a lot to manage, I do not want to tell you exactly what to do, but can help with navigating priorities, audiences and putting order behind your initiatives.
3. Team and Culture: product-market fit is important, but you need a team for it to really take off, I can help you understand how to build the best culture without compromising vision and focus.
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.
Carlo Martinez
About: An ed-tech innovator who desires to help people find their path through transformational technology.
Bio: After graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Finance from Georgia State University, Carlo realized his expectations of the real world were unrealistic. Unable to immediately qualify for a job in his field upon graduation, Carlo worked as a perfume salesman, a waiter, and other non-related, non-degree-requiring jobs.
Starting with an entry level job in his field as a teller, Carlo rapidly climbed the corporate ladder and discovered the world of data analytics in the financial industry. His fascination for decision making based on data analytics became a bit of an obsession, which led him to become a recognized expert in the field.
Carlo worked in Risk Management, Marketing Analytics and eventually US Commercial Portfolio Analytics leveraging the largest commercial data assets in the US. He was responsible for helping financial institutions drive strategies in building risk models, new product placements, investment opportunities and portfolio management using advanced analytical methodologies with big data technologies.
Using his talent and expertise in the field, Carlo developed Steppingblocks, a platform that empowers students to make intelligent education and career decisions using advanced analytics.
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.
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
Eric Levitan
About: Eric is a C-Level business leader skilled in growing technology companies. I love building businesses, solving problems, and creating a culture of engagement where employees love coming into work every day.
How I can help:
1. How to effectively communicate, both internally and externally. Communication is the key to success in business (and in life, in my opinion), and the better you can get at both verbal and written communication, the more success you are enabling yourself to have. Especially as you’re getting more into leadership.
2. Navigating your career. Understanding your strengths, weaknesses and passions is not always as easy as it sounds. Translating that into your career next steps can be even harder.
3. Developing Leadership. Leadership is not necessarily intuitive; it is a skill to be learned and developed. There are lots of leadership styles. Some are effective in certain situations but not in others. How to understand that and adapt, as necessary, is an important part of progressing in your career development.
More Info: LinkedIn | Website | Startup Website
Eric Vass
Company: Terminus
How I can help:
1. Providing knowledge and actionable advice on technical and business concerns facing their startup.
2. Being a positive presence and active promoter for the founders and business both internally and externally.
3. Providing access to my network where appropriate.
More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website
Geoff Wilson
Company: 352 Inc.
About: Named one of Inc.’s Top 30 Young Entrepreneurs, Geoff is a builder of all good and modern things (read: websites). His team at 352 Inc. has built the technology for highly successful startups such as YouCaring.com and MakeMyDeal.com (a Cox-owned company). Currently, Geoff’s team is building the technology for Atlanta-based MyLumper – a graduate of Georgia Tech’s Flashpoint program. The entrepreneurial spirit certainly doesn’t stop there in his family; his wife, Kim, started Social News Desk, a startup in the news media space that was acquired by a Fortune 500 company in 2014. Geoff’s team at 352 Inc. built Social News Desk’s technology and helped to scale the product. Although he’s fairly new to the city and hails from the Swamp (Go, Gators!), he’s already a huge fan and avid supporter of Atlanta and the local tech community – so much so that he was a part of the 2016 #ChooseATL campaign at SXSW in Austin. Geoff and Kim are proud parents to their three children: two boys and girl that’s due in August!
James Scott
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.
Jenna Rozenblat
About: Jenna is a mom of two who loves to read and cheer on the Steelers. She is passionate about leadership, operations, and good coffee.
Bio: Jenna is the CEO of Village Realty who is a proven leader with strengths in Operations, Program Management and Customer Experience. She has a reputation for building strong teams and seamlessly leading strategic initiatives across multiple departments including Sales, Customer Service, Product, Marketing and FP&A.
Jim Berryhill
About: I’m a first-time entrepreneur after 30+ years leading enterprise software organizations. I’m no technologist, my experience is 100% B2B and sales. I’m insanely focused on seller-to-customer value. I’m a Christian, all about family, love water-skiing and the Gators.
Bio: Jim Berryhill (CEO, DecisionLink) has 30+ years’ experience in sales, sales management and executive management within the computer software industry. He is an industry visionary with respect to customer-aligned value selling, leading several companies in the transition from product selling to solution/value selling. Jim instituted infrastructure and programs to facilitate the customer-aligned value selling that empowers solution sellers and is advocated in every advanced sales methodology. Lack of automation for this key function led him to found DecisionLink, the first company bringing the power of technology to this critical business function. Jim held executive positions at ADR, CA, Siebel Systems and Mercury Interactive.
A dean’s list graduate of the University of Georgia, Jim is a member of Trinity Anglican Mission in Atlanta, is married with two children and three grandchildren, enjoys water skiing and is an avid fan/booster of the Florida Gators.
John Duisberg
About: I have a passion for helping others who are looking to grow their sales for a B2B technology business.
Bio: John Duisberg is the co-founder of Cooleaf, an Atlanta based technology startup where he leads strategy and customer growth. John has a background in new product development and B2B sales. He has worked in a company owned by a Fortune 500 and a startup that ultimately became a billion dollar unicorn company. John is also a leader in High Tech Ministries.
John Pignata
Startup Solutions Architect with AWS
Company: Amazon Web Services
About: John Pignata is a Startup Solutions Architect with Amazon Web Services based in New York City. He is a software developer with 20 years of experience building consumer Internet products and operating high scale systems. Prior to joining AWS, John led the engineering team at GroupMe, a top 10 social app on iTunes and Google Play, which was acquired by Skype. John was the CTO of HowAboutWe, a unique dating property acquired by IAC, and a software consultant at Pivotal Labs where he coached teams on agile engineering practices such as test-driven development and continuous delivery. His focus at Amazon Web Services is working with early stage companies and helping them succeed in their product development efforts by guiding them in the architecture and design of flexible, highly available, and scalable solutions.
Andrew Shannon
Company: Atlanta Falcons
How I can help:
1. Business and people strategy: I’m great at business model 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. Pitch readiness: I can help you think through positioning and strategy for your pitch.
Josh Siegel
PRODUCT MANAGEMENT: Product Design/Go To Market Strategy
Company: Salesforce
How I can help:
1. Product hypothesis development and validation via user research.
2. Mobile and web application design and development – user experience review.
3. Go to market strategy-pricing, packaging, positioning, and messaging for customer acquisition.
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.
Karen Houghton
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
Company: Crescerance
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
Company: Assurant
How I can help:
1. Strategy and strategy execution – building goals, setting your priorities, and ensuring the 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
Senior Level Software Engineer
Company: BetterCloud
How I can help:
1. Continuous Delivery: moving changes of all types (features, bug fixes, configuration, even experiments) into production safely and quickly in a scalable way.
2. Infrastructure as Code: zero manual provisioning of cloud resources (GCP and AWS), move everything through source code management.
3. Automation – deployment automation, acceptance, and performance test automation for both the front-end and back-end.
More Info: LinkedIn
Lauren Patrick
MARKETING: Growth "Smarketing" & Storytelling
Company: Bark
How I can help:
1. Marketing – growth marketing for B2B or B2C startups. I can advise on programs, strategies, tactics, and activities to take that product-market fit and scale it from $0 to $100K then on to $1 to $5M. Areas of expertise include content (blogs, long-form, etc.), marketing operations metrics (traffic to conversions), events, customer nurturing, messaging, etc.
2. Public/Media relations – how to write a press release, get quotes from the right sources, pitch it to media, and get featured in the news, plus how to establish relationships with key reporters, editors, bloggers and influencers.
3. Social media – launching your startup (or personal) handles is a big deal! Growing an audience and joining the conversation is tricky but I can show you how to rock the “core 4” of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
More Info: LinkedIn | Twitter | Website
M. Cole Jones
Company: RIISE Ventures
How I can help:
1. Presenting and Crafting a Compelling Pitch and Narrative to various audiences.
2. How to leverage a Marketing and Strategic Plan on a Ramon Noodles Budget.
3. How to cultivate and maintain relationships with potential, investors mentors and advisos.
Michael Horten
LEGAL: Financing, Term Sheets, Angel Investing
Company: Atlanta Technology Angels, Horten CC
About:
1. Choose the right legal entity.
2. Structure the Villager’s relationship with co-founders.
3. Make proper arrangements for dealing with “what-ifs,” such as a co-founder’s death, decision to quit working
for the company or sell his or her interest in the company.
4. Grant incentive awards without incurring burdensome tax consequences.
5. Protect the company’s intellectual property.
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.
Rachel Ford
Company: Bakkt
How I can help:
1. Customer Discovery! I absolutely love teaching people the process to prove/disprove their assumptions when building their businesses.
2. Fundraising & Investor Readiness (especially for first-timers). I’m happy to talk about seed rounds, structuring use of funds, financial modeling, investment vehicles/terms, how to run a fundraising process, put together investor hit lists, etc.
3. Crafting the Pitch (verbal, written, and visual).
***Bonus round…if anyone is looking at applying to accelerator programs, I’d be more than happy to help them evaluate their readiness and to edit applications.
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.
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”.
Terry Bauer
Company: Specialdocs Consultants & Bauer Health
How I can help:
1. Leadership: As an experienced 3X CEO, I can help guide Founders/CEOs through the process of leading a team.
2) Raising: I’ve raised over $75 million in capital and completed 27 M&A transactions.
3) Empathy: I’ve made my share of mistakes over the years, and am happy to share those with all who will listen. Had a few successes that I can talk about as well.
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.