Atlanta Tech is on Fire
By: Romeen Sheth
Tags: Startup Life, Startup Lessons, Technology, Atlanta, Venture Capital

On November 19, I tweeted about 4 incredible Atlanta startups all reaching multi-billion dollar valuations (Calendly, OneTrust, Greenlight and Kabbage). 3,200+ liked the tweet. Why? I think it’s because there’s a special energy building in Atlanta. Let’s unpack what’s going on in this “overnight success hub” — it’s been 15 years in the making.

Atlanta has historically been a Fortune 500 town. Today Atlanta is home to 26 F1000 companies (16 F500) — household names like UPS, Delta, Coca Cola. All have been instrumental to “increasing the size of the pie” — these companies cumulatively do $500B+ in revenue annually. Atlanta has had tech success, but it’s been few and far between. Meanwhile, something deeper has been happening. Specialized expertise has been sewed into the city’s fabric — logistics, aerospace, retail, payments. Atlanta goes toe to toe with any other city on vertical expertise.

Despite this, 2 things were missing: (1) consistent local success + (2) organization. The biggest thing I learned from my time in SF was the importance of community energy. Hypergrowth companies breed more hypergrowth companies. Organization turns potential energy into kinetic energy.

The energy started shifting in ’07. Michael Cohn started Cloud Sherpas, Dave Payne and Michael Tavani started Scout Mob and David Cummings started Pardot. All successful outcomes, but more importantly these 3 (amongst MANY key others) started developing founder community.

David would go on to start Atlanta Tech Village, which birthed Calendly, SalesLoft, Terminus, Rigor. Dave is one of the most founder friendly Techstars MDs in the country and Michael started Overline VC of which several mainstay institutions in Atlanta are LPs.

This same model is prevalent in the other winners — the Dabbiere brothers sold Airwatch for $1.5B and co-founded OneTrust (currently valued at $5.1B). Johnson Cook co-founded Atlanta Tech Village and is President of Greenlight Card ($1B+). Paul Judge sold Cipher Trust and then started Pindrop ($1B+).

This mindset shift was necessary, but not sufficient. It was the follow on effort of everyone in the community that poured absolute gas on the ecosystem. Technology Association of Georgia (TAG), Metro Atlanta Chamber, the Atlanta CEO Council, and many others built true community — amplifying resources, knowledge, connectivity.

We started harnessing our greatest commercial assets (F500 ecosystem) — Engage VC started a fund with 10 Atlanta Fortune 500s all as LPs. We used to lose the best Georgia Tech engineers to the Valley and NY. Now many of them stay in town. Empowering 17,000 engineers to build in ATL is infectious. The result is companies like STORD and Flock Safety.

And outsiders are taking notice. Turns out low cost of living, weather and downright good people are pretty attractive when you’re deciding where to live. Atlanta has consistently been one of the top transplant cities in the country over the last 5 years.

So what do you get when you get an engaged corporate community + 17,000 engineers (and awesome tech/non-tech talent from HBCUs like Morehouse and Spelman), the world’s busiest airport + successful founders pouring back into the ecosystem? A world class tech hub.

Excitingly, this has started to spin off a bunch of other cool stuff — Google for Startups is led by one of our own (Jewel Burks Soloman); Opendoor opened HQ2 here and Paul Judge is co-leading the Opportunity Fund for Softbank. I talk to 1 high growth Founder a week about seriously considering Atlanta.

Similarly many of my SF friends ask me to “help them identify the next best ATL company” to which I say — happily, but good luck! ATL is brimming with early stage funds — we have over 17 now, many of which have been started in the last 2 years.

So who else is super exciting I left off the original list? Mailchimp, Salesloft, STORD, Flock Safety, Bakkt, Switchyards, Rigor, Greenzie, Rubicon, Fullstory, Padsplit, Rural Sourcing, Gather and so many more.

This ecosystem is about to blow the lid off. It’s been slowly compounding year over year, not visible to others. So just remember, when over the next 5 years everyone talks about “how obvious it is that Atlanta is a tech hub”, remember it’s been 15+ years in the making.