Last night was the third meeting of the Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs, a Meetup group that I started this past December. Although the first two meetings in January and February were “just getting started” outings, this was the first event that made me think “Hey, we can really pull off something great here!” And that is why I finally decide to go ahead and blog about it.
I’ve been in Atlanta for most of my life and the positive, community-oriented, grassroots entrepreneurial tech culture thriving in San Francisco and Boston and has been all but none-existent in the modern era. Atlanta has been a Fortune 1000 town [1]; its high tech community has either chased big business dollars or been of the “get rich quick” dotbomb variety [2], or both. And those who prostrate to major corporations or indenture to venture capitalists are rarely of the “rising tide float all boats” ethos interested in the types of business communities I’ve yearned to be involved in.
Most readers of this blog know that web technologies have evolved to the point anyone with reasonable intelligence and enough passion can create a successful online business; no deep technical knowledge and only a tiny amount of startup capital required. That level of empowerment has unleashed latent entrepreneurial aspirations worldwide. The new-style online businesses people are creating may or may not be a jackpot like YouTube has been for its founders, but they can provide a great living for those involved.
And that excites me. But what really excites me more is, with events like SoCon07, Podcamp Atlanta, and others it’s evident the community-oriented entrepreneurial web ethos that I’ve so longed has finally arrived in Atlanta!
I won’t take any credit for Atlantans new interest in building agile online businesses as none would be deserved. But I will say I’m now doing what I can to help catalyze this transformation of Atlanta’s entrepreneurial web landscape in hopes to see as supportive an ecosystem emerge as those found in the aforementioned Boston and San Francisco.
Wish us luck!
Footnotes
- Atlanta’s Fortune 1000 include Home Depot, UPS, Coca Cola, BellSouth (now of AT&T), Delta Airlines, Southern Company, SunTrust, Genuine Parts, and Cox Communications to name a few.
- Atlanta’s notable exceptions to the dotbomb moniker have been Mindspring/Earthlink, JBoss, and Internet Security Systems.
Hi Mike,
I wish you the best in your endeavors. I was part of several dot-bomb companies here in Atlanta back in the day. Intelliquest, Naviant, Ultigo, NTSG, the list goes on. I must admit I’m getting a little itchy to get back in though. I’ll try to hit the next meeting if I can and spread the word as well.
Thanks Daland. So will I be seeing you at our meetings? :)
Yes, I hope so. It looks like a good group!