Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center

Why a founders’ agreement is important for every small business

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If you’re an entrepreneur with that golden, once-in-a-lifetime idea, it can feel impossible to hit the brakes. The name of the game is momentum — slow down, and you’ll miss that window of opportunity, right?

But sometimes you just have to press pause, take a deep breath, and make sure you’re not missing anything big before moving forward. All of those legal documents and agreements you’ll need to draw up are a good example: if you speed on past them, you might regret it down the line.

In other words, you should focus on building a solid foundation before taking the next step with your business. And if you’re planning to run your business with co-founders, then a founders’ agreement is pretty much the perfect place to start.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.fundera.com/blog/founders-agreement

Georgia Tech names new leadership for ATDC

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John Avery is the new director of Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC).

The Georgia Institute of Technology has named John Avery as its next director of the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC).

Avery, a serial entrepreneur who was involved in four startups, assumes his position Nov. 6. Most recently, he was engineering group manager of Panasonic Automotive Systems’ Panasonic Innovation Center at the Georgia Tech campus.

A unit of the Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI2), Georgia Tech’s outreach and economic development arm, ATDC works with more than 800 technology startup entrepreneurs each year across Georgia. Founded in 1981, ATDC has become one of the most successful, longest-running, and largest university-based startup incubators in the country.

The announcement follows a comprehensive, four-month national search for a new leader at ATDC following the departure of Jen Bonnett, who left in June 2018 to become the Savannah Economic Development Authority’s vice president of innovation and entrepreneurship.

In taking the permanent appointment, Avery will lead a team of 26 full- and part-time staff and advisors who run ATDC’s various initiatives, including its financial, health, and retail technology verticals, support statewide activities such as the ATDC @ program, and coach technology entrepreneurs in Georgia.

Avery will report to Chris Downing, EI2 vice president and director.

“John is an outstanding leader and successful entrepreneur who understands the startup journey and commercialization process, with vast relationships in the startup and business communities,” Downing said. “We’re pleased to welcome him to EI2and see him bring ATDC, one of the nation’s premiere technology incubators, to even greater success in its mission of helping entrepreneurs build great companies here in Georgia.”

At Panasonic, Avery oversaw the innovation center’s development projects in next-generation automotive systems including, infotainment, bio-sensing, machine vision, deep learning, and heads-up displays.

A tech startup veteran with broad experience in data and wireless voice technologies, Avery was co-founder and chief technology officer of Convergence Corp., a maker of software that connects wireless devices to the Internet. Amazon acquired the company in 1999. Following that acquisition, he joined Amazon as engineering manager.

In 2001, Avery became an early employee of Mobliss, a mobile applications and messaging solutions company in the entertainment space. He later became the company’s chief technology officer. Japan’s Index Corp., a developer of mobile phone content and information and other media services such as video on demand,acquired Mobliss in 2004 for $15 million.

He holds six patents and owns Onboard Now, a developer of software for embedded devices such as smart phones, Web-enabled cameras, and industrial controls.

Avery, who sits on the board of the Midtown Alliance, is a familiar presence at ATDC, having served as a mentor to its startups since July of 2018.

“I am deeply honored to join ATDC and lead this amazing team,” Avery said. “ATDC’s work has resulted in the creation of great, disruptive Georgia companies in health, financial services, hardware, and numerous other sectors. I look forward to continuing ATDC’s momentum of success and legacy of impact.”

He holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Georgia Tech.

About Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI2)

Comprised of a dozen programs, including the Advanced Technology Development Center, Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute is the nation’s largest and most comprehensive university-based program of business and industry assistance, technology commercialization, and economic development. Through its philosophy of innovation-led economic development, EI2serves all of Georgia through a variety of services and programs designed to create, accelerate, and growGeorgia’s tech-based economy. For more information, please visit, innovate.gatech.edu.

About the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC)

The Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), a program of Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute, is the state of Georgia’s technology startup incubator. Founded in 1980 by the Georgia General Assembly which funds it each year, ATDC’s mission is to work with entrepreneurs in Georgia to help them learn, launch, scale, and succeed in the creation of viable, disruptive technology companies. Since its founding, ATDC has grown to become one of the longest running and most successful university-affiliated incubators in the United States, with its graduate startup companies raising more than $3 billion in investment financing and generating more than $12 billion in revenue in the state of Georgia. To learn more, visit atdc.org.

Source: https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2018/11/05/georgia-tech-names-new-director-for-advanced.html 

ATDC taking applications for fall 2017 venture showcase road trip

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The Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), the state of Georgia’s technology incubator, is now accepting applications from high-growth technology startups for its upcoming Dec. 4, 2017 Venture Showcase Roadtrip to New York City.

The application period is open from Oct. 2 through 5 p.m. on Oct. 20, and any Georgia-headquartered technology company raising a Series A round or higher is eligible.  The 10 selected companies will be notified Oct. 27 after the selection committee has reviewed all applicants.

The Venture Showcase Roadtrip is co-hosted by Morris, Manning & Martin, Silicon Valley Bank, Venture Atlanta, the Metro Atlanta Chamber, and Aprio.

Those interested in applying should send a one-page executive summary to ATDC Assistant Director Jane McCracken at jane@atdc.org.

The initiative is an offshoot of the ATDC’s Investor Connect program, and allows funders — from angels to venture capitalists and other later-stage investors — to network with the highly vetted, market disruptive companies in ATDC’s Signature and Accelerate portfolios.

David Thomas headshot
David Thomas, founder and CEO of Evident, an ATDC Signature portfolio company.

“The Venture Showcase Roadtrip introduces investors to a carefully curated group of companies to foster meaningful and targeted conversations and connections, as well as give the venture firms a sense of the caliber of technology startups in Georgia,” McCracken said. “Our inaugural roadtrip to the West Coast earlier this year is a perfect example of the kinds of connections we facilitate.”

In that trip to San Francisco, 11 Georgia companies met with a group of Silicon Valley venture capitalists. Evident, an ATDC Signature portfolio company, met with New Enterprise Associates (NEA). That initial connection resulted in NEA becoming the lead investor in Evident’s recent $8.8 million Series A round.

“The San Francisco trip was an important milestone for our company. The ATDC name got us in front of an extremely selective and highly sought after group of venture capitalists eager to meet quality, disruptive companies,” said David Thomas, Evident’s founder and CEO. “It facilitated a critically important series of initial meetings that ultimately led to our successful Series A.”

ABOUT ATDC:

The Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), a program of the Georgia Institute of Technology, is the state of Georgia’s technology startup incubator. Founded in 1980 by the Georgia General Assembly which funds it each year, ATDC’s mission is to work with entrepreneurs in Georgia to help them learn, launch, scale, and succeed in the creation of viable, disruptive technology companies. Since its founding, ATDC has grown to become one of the longest running and most successful university-affiliated incubators in the United States, with its graduate startup companies raising $3 billion in investment financing and generating more than $12 billion in revenue in the state of Georgia. To learn more, visit atdc.org.

GSA looks to help startups navigate big contracts

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The General Services Administration has posted a guide to help new technology startups navigate the agency’s sprawling multiple awards schedule contracts.

The Multiple Award Schedule Roadmap, said the GSA’s MAS Program Management Office, is part of the agency’s response to feedback from emerging, small and start-up businesses that getting onto MAS contracts such as IT Schedule 70 can be complicated and time-consuming.

The effort, according to a Sept. 21 blog post, was rolled out under the agency’s “Making It Easier” initiative.

Keep reading this article at: https://fcw.com/articles/2017/09/26/gsa-startup-guide-rockwell.aspx

Start-up firm provides solar panels for new Atlanta stadium

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On a sunny afternoon, Norman “Finn” Findley stands beneath a canopy of shiny solar paQuotation: “It blows people’s minds. It still blows my mind a little bit.”nels that covers a parking lot adjacent to what will be Atlanta’s new football stadium.

“It blows people’s minds,” Findley said, explaining to two visitors how his company’s QuadPod Solar Canopy system will work. “It still blows my mind a little bit.”

Findley is CEO of the startup Quest Renewables, and this project is one of their most expansive undertakings to date. It comprises two sets of canopies that measure about 130 feet by 250 feet each.

Solar canopies are high ground-clearance structures designed for solar panels, but they also function as carports by providing shade for vehicles parked beneath them.

Quest Renewables’ technology allows for about 90 percent of the canopy construction to take place on the ground. Then, cranes hoist the solar panels up in the air to mount them atop the company’s specially engineered trusses and members.

The total system will produce 617.5 kilowatts of power for each hour of sunlight. When fully operational, the system will generate enough electricity to power nine home games per season.

For Findley, this show-and-tell at the stadium is all in a day’s work. This particular day will be filled with meetings. Some are planned — there’s the staff meeting, a new employee orientation, and an investor call — but others come up unexpectedly, such as an impromptu meeting with another investor who is touring the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), the startup incubator that’s home to Quest Renewables’ operations.

“This is an angel investor,” said Frank Tighe, ATDC’s lead entrepreneur-in-residence and advisor to Quest Renewables’ leadership team, making the introduction between Findley and the visitor. “He wanted to know a little bit about ATDC, and I wanted to take him around to meet some of the companies.”

Straight away, Findley goes into presentation mode, giving his 30-second “elevator pitch” to the visitor, explaining as succinctly as possible what his company does and how it creates value for its customers.

“We manufacture racking systems that hold solar panels up off the ground for solar commercial installations at lower cost and in a shorter time frame,” Findley said, before going into a deeper conversation with the investor.

Planned or unplanned, these opportunities are all part of the pattern in the life of a startup CEO, said Findley, a former Coca-Cola executive who left the beverage giant in 2016 to focus on Quest Renewables full time.

And while each new day is different, Findley pointed out, he begins and ends each one the same way.

“It’s get the kids up and out the door for carpool to school and get out to the gym,” the married father of two said. “Then it’s work and then to get out in time to go home and put the kids to bed.”

Rows of solar panels elevated on a canopy above the concrete ground
Quest Renewables makes systems that hold solar panels up off the ground, allowing for parking beneath. The total system being installed here will produce 617.5 kilowatts of power for each hour of sunlight. Photo credit: Rob Felt.
A Strong Team

 

Although Findley has always had an entrepreneurial mindset, he joined The Coca-Cola Company in 1996 and held several managerial positions in sales and marketing.

Going the corporate route before venturing into the startup world was part of a long-term career strategy.

“I’ll take risks, but only calculated risks,” Findley said. “And for me, the corporate life made sense 20 years ago, while I was taking some risks on the side through investing in some startups.”

Over time, his entrepreneurial interest would grow, and in 2013, a friend introduced him to Joseph Goodman, who at the time was a senior research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, Georgia Tech’s applied research and development organization.

“Our mutual friend encouraged us to meet, and we met once a month to see how things were going with his research,” Findley said, explaining that their matchmaking friend thought his commercialization experience at Coke could be beneficial to Goodman. “Joseph said he thought there might be a business in his research, but he couldn’t be certain. As we spent time together and I saw how things were going, I got to understand the size of the business opportunity.”

The year after that initial meeting, Findley, along with Beau Baldock and Will Arnold, founded Quest Renewables, licensing a patent from Georgia Tech based on research that Goodman and others at the Institute had conducted.

On Quest Renewables’ team, Goodman is chief technology officer, Baldock is senior vice president of supply chain, and Arnold is senior vice president of operations.

“I went to Babson College to get my MBA in entrepreneurship, and what they tell you is, the three most important things to have are a strong team, a strong team, and a strong team,” Findley said. “If you have a great idea but a weak team, you won’t be able to execute on that idea.”

As the founding team members began to build the company, they went through Georgia Tech’s VentureLab, the Institute’s startup and incubation support program for Tech faculty and students who want to create companies based on their research.

After graduating from VentureLab, Quest Renewables was accepted into ATDC’s Signature portfolio. ATDC, a sister incubation program to VentureLab, works with entrepreneurs across Georgia (no Georgia Tech affiliation required) who have a proven business model and customers, and are most likely to succeed long term in the marketplace.

Left: a man views diagrams on a computer screen. Right: a meeting is conducted around a conference table.
Left: James Keane, a system specialist at Quest Renewables, reviews the schematics for a solar canopy design. Right: Norman “Finn” Findley (far right) holds one of his weekly Monday meetings with members of his staff to go over projects and other ongoing company initiatives. Photo credit: Rob Felt.
In the Energy Space

The Georgia Tech research that got Findley’s attention led to a foundation design and support structure that takes up less physical space and uses less than half the steel found in traditional solar canopy construction. Because of the design and the weight it can support, the canopy can hold more solar panels than other canopies without having to expand the support structure’s footprint.

The goal behind the initial research and development was to see if there was a way to increase cost efficiencies in the non-­photovoltaic part of solar panel installations, Findley said. That meant focusing on the labor, support structure, and electrical costs. The U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative funded the original research.

Quotation: "I'll take risks, but only calculated risks."

The design is a modular space frame, which makes it easier to construct and allows crews to erect the canopies in half the time it takes to build competing structures.

“We’re extremely efficient from the standpoint that we can put them up faster, we can put more of them up per acre — so we can generate more power over a given parking lot — and we can put them up generally at a lower cost to the customer,” Findley said.

Since the solar canopy structures are elevated, they create functional parking lots in addition to energy.

“We can build on surface parking lots and elevated parking decks, which allows us to produce the energy close to where the power is needed, which puts less stress on the electrical grid because you don’t have to produce it in south Georgia, for example, and then try to pipe it all the way up here,” Findley said.

While the energy industry doesn’t track the solar canopy sector specifically, the solar energy business is growing and accounted for 39 percent of all new electric capacity that was added to the U.S. electric grid in 2016, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), a trade group based in Washington, D.C. The industry attracted $23 billion in investments in 2016, up from about $18.3 billion in 2015, according to SEIA/GTM Research’s U.S. Solar Market Report and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Under Findley’s leadership, Quest Renewables tripled its revenue between 2014 and 2015, repeating that feat again in 2016. The company projects it will quadruple revenue in 2017.

The company remains linked to Georgia Tech through its work with T. Russell Gentry, an associate professor, structural engineer, and building materials researcher in the School of Architecture.

Partnering with Gentry, Quest Renewables presents challenges to his students, who are tasked with coming up with ways to improve the canopy’s efficiency.

“The question we asked them is, do you see where we could be better and more efficient in our use of materials,” said James Keane, Quest Renewables’ system specialist and a 2013 Georgia Tech graduate with a bachelor’s degree in architecture.

“We’re asking them whether there is a more optimal size for these components or whether they should somehow be designed differently.”

The technology has garnered the company some national attention. In the spring of 2016, then-U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz visited Georgia Tech, noting the Institute’s role as a leader in developing innovative energy solutions in the Southeast and meeting with a select group of ATDC companies in the energy space, including Quest Renewables.

That same year, the Georgia Research Alliance, which seeds and funds startup companies in the state, announced it was making an investment in Quest Renewables via its GRA Venture Fund, which was established to finance high-potential companies spinning out of Georgia’s universities.

Lauren Terris running on campus with Norman “Finn” Findley
Lauren Terris, operations manager at Quest Renewables, runs with Norman “Finn” Findley, the company’s CEO. The two regularly run on and around the Georgia Tech campus while discussing corporate strategies and initiatives. Photo credit: Rob Felt.
Big-Picture Perspective

The stadium initiative is the largest to date for Quest Renewables, though the company has other projects in its portfolio, including a canopy array at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia, and projects in other states including Maryland, Oregon, California, and Maine.

One recently completed project is with Standard Solar, a Rockville, Maryland-based company that specializes in the development and financing of solar electric systems.

The company hired Quest Renewables to design and put together a canopy for a Rockville-area parking deck.

Parking decks are more challenging than surface lots for solar canopy projects, said C.J. Colavito, Standard Solar’s director of engineering.

That’s because the canopy has to be integrated within and anchored to an existing structure and requires a customized engineering approach, he said.

“There are a number of things Quest does well where they are able to add value where other providers have struggled,” Colavito said, adding that his firm is working on another project with Quest Renewables, scheduled for completion by the second quarter of 2017. “One of the things Quest does better than anybody else is, they have a system that’s capable of having very long spans between connections. You get a lot more density at lower costs than other systems because of their proprietary truss system while maintaining the canopy’s structural integrity.”

Accolades such as this come with a hiccup that most startups would love to have: demand for services — so much so that the company is scaling back its growth. Findley wants each customer to have a quality experience.

“We created such a compelling product that we have demand that exceeds our ability to deliver a quality customer experience, so we’ve been ratcheting back our growth to make sure that every customer we work with is delighted,” he said.

This approach, he said, fits in with the company’s long-term goal regarding its place and impact on the industry.

“The inspiration for our company comes from a very big-picture perspective. The idea that we could lower the cost of solar and be able to produce it near where the demand is located while still using existing spaces like parking lots rather than covering up natural green fields with solar panels is what drives what we do,” Findley said. “What we would really like is that in 10 years, for people to say that we really made solar and renewable energy to be preferential to fossil fuels.”

Source: http://www.rh.gatech.edu/features/its-gonna-be-bright-sunshiny-day

Defense Intelligence Agency’s ‘Shark Tank’ helps startups pitch spy apps

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The Setting: A high-tech military facility just outside of Washington, DC — the headquarters of the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA.   Anshuman Roy, the president and founder of Rhombus, a data analytics company, is in a large open space outfitted with computers, whiteboards, and cameras.  It looks a bit like a young hacker space of the sort that began popping up in San Francisco in 2007 and, before that, in Europe.

Roy stands in front of a digital projection of a map of Syria. Green and red areas show where his proprietary neural network has determined that unrest or violence is likely imminent. Analysts at DIA can use the tool to look at “precursors to instability,” he explains to a small audience.

The analysts can refine the results by adding or subtracting variables — local economic factors, ethnic and religious makeup, even fresh water availability or food price inflation. This, he explains, is a huge improvement over previous models that relied on just four variables computed by humans. Rhombus’s cloud-based neural net can draw in much more information to help analysts make better predictions.

“It doesn’t give directions. It suggests to help override cognitive bias,” he says.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2017/04/defense-intelligence-agencys-shark-tank-startups-pitch-spy-apps/137320

Georgia Tech announces new way to ‘engage’ technology startups

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A new mentorship-driven accelerator and venture fund targeting high-tech startups is coming to Atlanta.

The national program, called Engage, launched Jan. 12th through a joint announcement from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, and the CEOs of 10 leading global corporations.

Georgia Tech's Tech Square will be home to a new accelerator and venture fund called Engage.
Georgia Tech’s Tech Square will be home to a new accelerator and venture fund called Engage.

The Engage accelerator is open to startups across the country, with a focus placed on mentoring and market access strategies. Applications will be available in early 2017, with programming scheduled to begin in the spring. Up to 48 startups could go through the program in the first three years.

The program will be supported through a venture fund, and 10 corporations have committed $15 million to date. In addition, the corporations will actively support the accelerator through mentoring, education, and collaboration.

Engage will offer programming and other services through a contract with the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), which was established at Georgia Tech by Georgia lawmakers in 1980 to launch and build technology companies.

The primary objective of the mentoring is to help startups with their go-to-market strategy. Engage will also help the startups connect with the resources and right people in the large companies.

G.P. "Bud" Peterson is the eleventh president of Georgia Tech.
G.P. “Bud” Peterson is the eleventh president of Georgia Tech.

“Georgia Tech is committed to continue working with both large corporations and startups to grow the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Atlanta and throughout the Southeast,” said Georgia Tech President G.P. “Bud” Peterson. “By engaging the business community to maximize our collective strengths, we can attract and grow new companies, foster economic development, and retain talent in Georgia.”

Georgia Tech is recognized as a national leader in promoting entrepreneurial opportunities and economic development. Tech Square, for example, is home to more than a dozen corporate innovation centers. Engage will provide additional commercialization opportunities for Georgia Tech students, faculty, and research.

Engage is a key initiative of the Atlanta Committee for Progress (ACP), a coalition that includes the mayor of Atlanta, leading CEOs, and university presidents. The ACP focuses on critical issues facing the city; one of its key priorities is furthering Atlanta’s development as a leading technology hub with increased access to funding for startups. In addition to getting direct support from the founding companies, Engage entrepreneurs will be connected to more than 30 companies that are ACP members.

“Atlanta is the Southeast’s technology, innovation and entrepreneurship capital, with the third-largest concentration of Fortune 500 companies in the country,” Reed said.  “We must take advantage of these unique assets to further stimulate our growing ecosystem of start-ups and growth-stage companies, connecting them to capital, talent and mentorship. This new venture fund and accelerator program will offer an unmatched opportunity for entrepreneurs in Atlanta and the region, and I am confident its success will lead to greater interest and investment in our emerging technology companies.”

The 10 founding companies contributing capital, expertise, time, and resources in support of Engage include AT&T, Chick-fil-A, Cox Enterprises, Delta Air Lines, Georgia-Pacific, Georgia Power Foundation Inc., Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), Invesco Ltd., The Home Depot, and UPS. Executives from these firms – many of which are Fortune 500 companies – will serve as mentors to the companies receiving financial support from Engage.

What makes Engage unique is the interaction of these global companies with the startup ecosystem to help entrepreneurs build companies that will transform their markets. Rather than filling the specific needs of a single large company, Engage startups will benefit from the combined perspective of the founding companies.

“The robust level of participation from the city’s leading corporations will help ensure Engage’s success by providing a world-class incubation program for high-potential start-ups,” said Martin L. Flanagan, president and CEO of Invesco and a member of the Atlanta Committee for Progress.

Each of the founding companies committed $1.5 million to a venture fund that has been formed to make equity and equity-related investments into companies admitted to Engage. The fund will be managed by Tech Square Ventures.

“By combining mentoring from executives of Atlanta’s top companies and experienced entrepreneurs with programming from ATDC, Engage will give entrepreneurs unparalleled market access and connectivity to help them bring their ideas to market,” said Blake Patton, managing partner of Tech Square Ventures.

In February: ‘Startup Bootcamp’ for Savannah-area founders of technology-based startups

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atdcApplications are now open for the 2017 Boot Camp class which is scheduled for February 2017 – March 2017

See upcoming schedule and application for the 2017 bootcamp and apply here.

Startup Boot Camp is available to Savannah-area founders of technology and product based startups. The program is based on the lean startup model and is designed to lead entrepreneurs through the concept to launch of their product.

The interactive program will help entrepreneurs identify and vet their target customers, articulate their value proposition, make financial projections, and prepare them for seeking investment. Participants will also have access to Georgia Tech’s ATDC mentors during the class, which will provide both guidance and connections to resources.  Check out the past participants to hear their stories.

The courses are designed to be a combination of classroom-style training and workshops to educate and move you forward on your journey. The 12 workshops encompass ATDC’s Entrepreneurs’ Education Series, which prepares entrepreneurs for ascent and learn best practices through interactive classes and workshops. An experienced entrepreneur and ATDC mentor will teach each workshop. The Savannah workshops will be taught by mentors from Savannah and Atlanta.  At the end of the bootcamp, participants will pitch at a demo day attended by the public and showcase their company or ideas.  The winner of the pitch event will receive $10,000 cash prize from SEDA.

2017 WORKSHOP SCHEDULE 

February 6:  Customer Discovery Part 1:.  Identify your target customers and value proposition

February 13:  Customer Discover Part 2.  Validate target customers.

February 21:  Business Model Canvas Part 1:  How to reach and acquire customers (channels).

February 28:  Business Model Canvas Part 2 – Complete product roadmap and business model.

March 7: Financial Literacy (open to all ATDC members)

March 14:  Executive Summary

March 21:  Elevator Pitch

March 28:  Investor Pitch Preparation

April (TBD):  SAV Startup Demo day and Bootcamp Graduate pitches

CLICK HERE TO APPLY

Tech startups struggle to tap $82 billion in federal contracts

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tangherlini-would-be-a-way-better-gsa-administrator-12-2016Jason Wagner’s cyber startup sells a digital platform federal agencies need. But lacking the heft or connections of a major defense contractor, it would be more trouble than it’s worth for him to seek a coveted federal contract. And he’s not alone.

During 15 years as a contract employee for intelligence agencies, Wagner saw cybersecurity analysts waste time transferring data for their investigations across multiple computer applications. So last year he started Tensor Wrench, which makes such information-sharing easier.

Now with a team of six, his customers include General Dynamics Corp.’s Mission Systems division, which helps run communications systems used on satellites, and by law enforcement. But he still hasn’t put the biggest potential buyer — the federal government, which spent $82 billion this year on information technology, about eight times Apple Inc.’s research and development budget — on his list of prospective clients.

“The government is a big juicy target,” Wagner, 38, said in an interview. “It’s tempting, but you got to figure out how much time you want to invest and whether you can afford that. When we added everything up, the answer came back: not now.”

Many cyber startups make similar calculations in weighing whether to do business with the government, where they face a complex and slow procurement process that can strangle smaller companies. Amid rising cyber threats, the gap in getting the latest technology tools is particularly worrisome for federal civilian agencies, from the Department of Veterans Affairs to the Department of Agriculture.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-08/tech-startups-struggle-to-tap-82-billion-in-federal-contracts

Innovation thrives in Tech Square

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When Georgia Tech opened Technology Square in 2003, one of the guiding principles was to foster a better connection with the business community. Fast forward to today and evidence of those successful connections can be found in the more than one dozen corporate innovation centers clustered in the area.

While these centers represent a diverse range of industries, they all have the common goal of tapping into the area’s culture of collaboration thanks to the vibrant network of students, faculty, researchers and startup entrepreneurs.

Georgia Tech President G.P. “Bud” Peterson hosted a roundtable discussion Tuesday morning, September 20, 2016, with a handful of corporate executives from companies that opened innovation centers in Tech Square.

Leaders from Georgia Tech, Anthem, Panasonic and UCB gathered in Georgia Tech's Tech Square to discuss the advantages of establishing innovation centers on university campuses. Their conversation examined the ways higher education can work with established companies, startups, and government to spur innovation, develop new technologies, and foster development.
Leaders from Georgia Tech, Anthem, Panasonic and UCB gathered in Georgia Tech’s Tech Square to discuss the advantages of establishing innovation centers on university campuses. Their conversation examined the ways higher education can work with established companies, startups, and government to spur innovation, develop new technologies, and foster development. (Click photo to play video.)

“This is a very exciting time for the innovation ecosystem that exists here in Atlanta, and in particular in Tech Square,” Peterson said during the event held in Tech Square. “The strategy is to try to provide an opportunity for large corporations to create an innovation space and access the talent and the technologies that exist here at Georgia Tech.”

The panelists included Tom Gebhardt, chief operating officer of Panasonic Automotive Systems Company of America, whose innovation center opened in 2012, making the company an early adaptor. The program has grown tenfold over the past four years, he said.

Gebhardt explained the benefits of working outside a traditional corporate environment.

“The ideas that are generated in this center versus what we’d get in our corporate environment are unmatched,” he said. “The mix, the demographic, the diversity, it’s not possible.”

UCB, the global biopharmaceutical company, is one of the newest innovation centers, having just opened the UCB Solution Accelerator this week. Its goal is to drive collaboration between the company and Georgia Tech to develop solutions to help those living with severe diseases.

Jeff Wren, head of UCB’s Neurology Patient Value Unit, explained how the centers demonstrate that problems cannot be solved just by the research and development units typically found at a company’s corporate headquarters.

“We have to go beyond our own walls,” Wren said. “We need to see transformation, but no single entity can create that transformation on their own. So if we want to see this transformation take place we have to be networked, and that is one of the reasons we are here.”

The centers do more than just help the companies. They engage with startups, providing them with access to markets and fostering relationships through mentorships, said Blake Patton, a technology entrepreneur and investor who is a managing partner with Tech Square Ventures, a seed and early-stage venture capital fund located in Tech Square.

The innovation centers are investors for the startups by becoming customers and partners, and providing platforms to help them to succeed, said Patton, a past general manager of Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center, a statewide startup technology business incubator.

ATDC’s current general manager, Jennifer Bonnett, moderated the discussion, which included questions from reporters who attended in person and those who watched the event through a live web stream.

One reporter asked for examples of products or solutions that came out of the innovation centers.

The first innovation created by the Anthem center allowed for what officials call a dynamic video, said Tom Miller, the chief information officer for the Fortune 50 health benefits company.

The company previously used a generic video to welcome new members who signed up for health care. Now a personalized video is dynamically generated that brings together attributes of a new client’s family, their situation and their health plan. The video is generated as soon as the client registers. While this information is currently incorporated in a welcome video, it will have additional uses as well, Miller said.

Miller said the innovation center has bred a new hope across the whole company, especially as the health care industry undergoes a major transformation.

“As a large company, you wonder if you’re going to be a part of it or if it’s going to happen to you,” he said. “For the first time in years, if you have a great idea you have somewhere to take it.”

More companies may soon have the same experience.

Peterson said the Institute is seeing more growth around Tech Square and is constantly talking with companies about different ways to engage in the area.

“We’re very excited about what’s going on and we’re very excited to see how it continues to grow and evolve,” Peterson said. “Five years from now it will look different than it does today, but I hope it retains this vibrancy, this energy and this innovative sprit.”

Source: http://www.news.gatech.edu/2016/09/21/innovation-thrives-tech-square

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