Atlanta Tech is on Fire

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.