We had the final night of CapVenture last night. Southeast Innovations, a publication which covers startups and investment firms in the Southeast, has a nice writeup on it.
CapVenture, as I’ve written before, was a great program run by the ATDC and TAG to help early stage companies in the fund raising process. Bravadosoft was one of 15 companies selected out of 100 applications.
Last night we had the final night. We were very fortunate to have the chance to be one of the 4 companies selected to give an extended 10 minute pitch. What a great time! I had quite a few potential partners and investors talk to me after the presentation, and I know several of the other companies did as well.
Many thanks to the ATDC and TAG, especially Cindy Cheatham and Charles Ross for organizing the program. Also thanks to Jim Morgan and Lance Weatherby for coaching and help during the program.
This is a great time for Bravadosoft. We’re in Beta now with 3 customers (more on that soon) and we’re actively speaking to potential investors.
So Bravadosoft is part of CapVenture.
In short, we’re part of a program run by the ATDC which helps early-stage entrepreneurs raise capital for their businesses. It’s been great so far. We’ve had speakers from the venture capital industry, from software startups, and from a major law firm that deals with startups.
At Bravadosoft we’re as early-stage as you can get, but it’s been good to see that we’re tracking nicely against some of the more established companies in the program. Our first release is almost ready and we’re speaking with customers. It’s a good group to be in, too.
I’ve said it before that Atlanta is showing a lot of good progress in becoming a startup-friendly city, and programs like this are really helping.
Bravadosoft is Atlanta-based, and for the most part that’s a cool thing. Two out of the three of us grew up here, we went to Georgia Tech, we like the weather, and our pro football team has a new quarterback.
Going into this startup we had some questions as to whether we should be based in Atlanta. We’d been to Silicon Valley and we know that Atlanta wasn’t the same. We figured we were lacking that great vibe and scene of a vibrant startup community. We don’t have very many local venture capital firms, entrepreneurs don’t live here, and our local support businesses (law firms, accounting firms, PR firms) don’t get the startup scene.
Happy to say now that we were wrong! I spent some time yesterday at a big event thrown by the Startup Lounge. Capital Connections was a pretty big gathering of 200 local VCs, attorney, angel investors, entrepreneurs, incubator staff, and other folks connected to the startup scene here in Atlanta.
I took one pathetic picture of the event:
It was dark and I only had my iPhone so this was the best I could do. At least it gives the sponsors a bit of a plug.
Here are a few thoughts on the event and on Atlanta in general:
- Big turnout! Scott said that were were probably 200 people there. It was storming and apparently some folks missed their planes into town, so it might have hit 250-300 people.
- Different feeling from a Silicon Valley mixer. A bit older crowd, a few more ties and suits, and nobody there wearing a camera.
- Another big change–not too much emphasis on consumer-based, Web 2.0 businesses. I saw quite a few people in the BioTech and health areas, and enterprise software and hardware was well represented. Bravadosoft was classified as “Infotech” which I guess fits in an extraordinarily broad sense.
- Cash bar. I just can’t see this as being acceptable in Mountain View.
- Conversation, and lots of it. You could see investors talking to each other, you could see startup guys frantically trying to meet an investor, and there were product demos going on in the corner. It was cool to see.
- The ATDC looked to be well represented by staff and member companies. As a Tech alum that’s a good thing to see.
So I’m excited about being Atlanta-based. We’re having a BarCamp coming up soon and things are only going to get better here.
