Last week I visited Atlanta Tech Village, which opened last year in Buckhead and is founded and funded by David Cummings, a co-founder of Pardot who sold it for a reported $100 million. Cummings is channeling a significant part of his money into ATV, which is basically a big cool office building for startups. It's got standard Silicon Valley accoutrements: game rooms, snacks galore, 24-hour beer on tap, in-house coffeehouse open 7am-8pm (the signboard outside trumpeted that "extended hours" were coming soon!).
The idea is that it's a space for startups with 1-25 employees. The lower floors have smaller office space and as you move up larger spaces are available. Each floor had co-working space, and each wall was covered with scribblings from dry erase markers. Some looked like protobusiness plans or fancy equations, and others looked like artistic meanderings. They made me feel surrounded by creativity and innovation, and a bit intimidated.
Comapnies have to apply to get in, and have to agree to ATV's 4 values:
- Be Nice.
- Dream Big.
- Pay it Forward.
- Work Hard. Play Hard.
ATV isn't an incubator, because it doesn't take equity in the companies--it's more like a landlord, renting space and propel Atlanta forward as a place for startups and innovation. Because I'm an org-geek, I wondered about its organizational form: it's a for-profit, but according to our guide it's probably not going to pay for itself for decades.
So much for the descriptors. Is it going to work? I don't know. I'm by nature a skeptic, and many have tried unsuccessfully to recreate that Silicon Valley startup magic. But I want it to work, and I sure liked what I saw. I attended the weekly "startup chowdown": open to the public, $10 gets you 2 slices of pizza, salad, a drink, and a place to talk to entrepreneurs in ATV and around Atlanta. Then came Pitch Practice, an entertaining hour where anyone could take the mike, explain the context of their pitch, try it out, and get feedback from the crowd. We heard from 1) an entrepreneur who was attending a contest and had 30 seconds to convince attendees to vote for him so that he could give a longer pitch, 2) an entrepreneur with a 60-second pitch, and 3) 2 entrepreneurs with a 60-second pitch. It was really fun--the crowd was supportive, and really focused on helping each entrepreneur do a better job at conveying his message and accomplishing his personal goal.
Here's some language from the website that captures what I think ATV is trying to do:
Your workspace should be more than just a desk and a place to hang your hat – – it should bring the community together, promote serendipitous interactions, and be a powerful tool for recruiting the best talent. The Village is designed as a campus for cool people doing cool things in technology.
Fingers crossed, ATV.
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