DragonCon starts next week!

Once again, I've been invited to speak in both the Space and Science tracks (which are over in the Hilton, across the street from the truly crazy stuff). I have three presentations:

What the Heck Happened to Our Space Program?
Friday, 11:30 am
Weren't we supposed to be orbiting Jupiter by 2010? Some history of NASA's highlights and lowlights, and why the proposed cancellation of the Constellation Project is good for sci-fi geeks who actually want to see exploration of space.

Hydrogen Cars, Ethanol, Wind Farms, and other Silly Ideas
Friday, 4:00 pm
A discussion of alternative energy sources, their uses (or misuses), their limitations, and what to do about America's addiction to fossil fuels.

Rise of the New Space Startups (with Michael Mealling)
Saturday, 11:30 am
President Obama's new space policy effectively removes NASA from near Earth manned space flights & expects commercial space groups to fill the void. Can they do it?

Tear yourself away from the comic books and lightsabers, and come hang out with the real geeks of DragonCon!

PDFs of all three presentations will eventually be available here.

Dr. Arun Majumdar, Director, Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy, will be visiting Georgia Tech on Monday. In addition to private meetings, he will be holding a public lecture for the Georgia Tech community:

Monday, April 19, 2010
3:00 - 4:15 pm
Clary Theater, Student Success Center

(For those of you unfamiliar with the SSC, it is tucked under the West stands of Grant Field. Park at the Student Center, walk down Cherry Drive, then up the Hill past the Tech Tower.)

Abstract

The report "Rising Above the Gathering Storm" proposed the creation of ARPA-E, which was later authorized and appropriated by Congress. The report suggested ARPA-E to be modeled after DARPA, which was created in 1958 in response to the launch of Sputnik. It was then felt that the US had lost its technological lead. The US now faces three Sputnik-like challenges: (a) energy security; (b) US technological lead; and (c) greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. In many cases, we as a nation are lagging behind and need to change course with fierce urgency. ARPA-E's goal is to help catalyze this change by attracting the best minds to focus on the major technical challenges in this field and by stimulating technical and the entrepreneurial community to innovate on energy technologies. While ARPA-E is adopting many of the best practices from DARPA, there are key differences between the defense and energy sectors of our economy, which must be recognized in ARPA-E's design. This talk will provide some thoughts of how we are putting its "DNA" together, and an outlook for the future.

Official Biography

Dr. Arun Majumdar

Director, Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy

Dr. Arun Majumdar became the first Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), the country’s only agency devoted to transformational energy research and development, in October 2009.

Prior to joining ARPA-E, Majumdar was the Associate Laboratory Director for Energy and Environment at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. His highly distinguished research career includes the science and engineering of energy conversion, transport, and storage ranging from molecular and nanoscale level to large energy systems. In 2005, Majumdar was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for this pioneering work.

At Berkeley Labs and UC Berkeley, Majumdar helped shape several strategic initiatives in the areas of energy efficiency, renewable energy, and energy storage. He also testified before Congress on how to reduce energy consumption in buildings. Majumdar has also served on the advisory committee of the National Science Foundation's engineering directorate, was a member of the advisory council to the materials sciences and engineering division of the Department of Energy’s Basic Energy Sciences, and was an advisor on nanotechnology to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Additionally, Majumdar - also an entrepreneur - has served as an advisor to startup companies and venture capital firms in the Silicon Valley.

He received his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 1985 and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989.

I'd like to welcome Christopher Lee and AMAC to the Enterprise Innovation Institute, effective July 1, 2010.

The Alternative Media Access Center is an initiative of the Board of Regents University System of Georgia with a mission to improve system wide services for students with print-related disabilities. AMAC has expanded its services nationwide to include all types of post-secondary institutions and other government agencies. They are committed to removing social and academic barriers to individuals with physical, sensory, and print-related learning disabilities by ensuring that all individuals with print disabilities have equal and timely access to print materials at an affordable cost.

To date, AMAC has been funded by the Georgia Board of Regents, and housed at the University of Georgia in Athens. This summer, AMAC will move to Atlanta and their funding will transfer from UGA to Georgia Tech. Christopher Lee and his staff will become Georgia Tech employees, with Chris reporting to me as a director in EI2.

Christoper is beginning to spend some of his time here on campus, and I'd encourage you to welcome him when you meet him. Also, please help introduce Christopher to anyone on campus who might be interested in connecting to AMAC.

I suddenly noticed how many music technology companies have recently sprung up in Georgia!Here's a quick list, but I am probably missing some:

• BandMetrics
• BeatTweet
• FreeAllMusic
• Khu.sh (LaDiDa)
• Maestro.fm
• Music Intelligence Solutions (uPlaya)
• Neurotic Media (Amplified.com)
• Rank 'Em
• Vertical Acuity
• Zooz Mobile

Some of these have raised substantial venture money, some are operating on a shoestring, and at least one has multiple millions in revenue already.  One of the neat things is that these are coming from multiple directions—Georgia Tech, SCAD, even the Athens music scene.

Then you add in all the music studios that call Atlanta home. Think we're seeing a cluster being born? IndieMusicTech seems to think so...

This is too long to tweet...

At Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta, Boingo contracts with the airport for Wi-Fi carriage. That means they don't control their own infrastructure.

I run JungleDisk on my Mac, which continually backs up selected directories to Amazon S3. I highly recommend their service. But, if it detects an Internet connection, it will silently start chewing up bandwidth to back up the files that have recently changed. So I connected successfully using my Boingo password, started to check my mail, got a few messages, then BOOM. Blacklisted.

ATL-WIFI has a policy that if you exceed secret bandwidth caps or exceed a secret number of TCP connections in a certain period, they declare you to be infected with malware, and they shut you down cold. No suggestions for remedy, no recourse, just "contact your administrator." The only person in authority near me is the bartender in the Concourse B Crown Room, and she's not exactly a networking ninja.

You can see the total and complete error message at the top of this post. There's not even a freaking phone number to call!

Luckily, I have my iPhone, so I found Boingo's phone number that way. Called them, spoke to a friendly but clueless tech support agent, waited on hold for twenty minutes waiting for Tier 2 support, who finally gave a phone number to call in Atlanta. Called that number, it was wrong... but they, at least, knew the right number.

Called there, got a very friendly tech named Marcus who cleared me off the blacklist in thirty seconds.

Net net, this took twenty minutes of my time, occupied four call-center agents, and certainly blew whatever profit margin Boingo thought they were going to make on me this month. (And toss into that, the first Boingo agent admitted that they get "many calls a day" from people having this exact same problem in ATL, and you wonder why they don't cut a better deal or build their own infrastructure).

What's a better solution to this problem? How about a friendlier error message? Explain that innocent programs like iTunes or even Web sites like YouTube can trigger automatic protections. Suggest avoiding those, then give the customer a button to clear the blacklist. Put a CAPTCHA — or Pramana software — in there to thwart bots. Voilà! I go from twenty minutes of frustration to twenty seconds of "Yeah, that makes sense."

And, oh yeah, put a phone number on there to contact someone if the button doesn't work.

When AT&T makes tethering on my iPhone legal, I will take great pleasure in cancelling the $10/month I spend for Boingo. Until then: the secret phone number of Hartsfield-Jackson ATL-WIFI tech support is (877) 452-9434. Ask for Marcus.

We had two incredible open forum sessions yesterday to discuss the future of ATDC. The Hodges Room was pretty much filled both times, so I suspect nearly 200 people took the time to come down and share their ideas with us. Thank you!

We broadcast both sessions over the Internet, courtesy of ATDC member PlayOn Sports, and the video streams are archived at the ATDC web site here and here. From Twitter comments, there were people out there actually watching; one from as far away as Boston! We'll try to keep broadcasting as many events as possible for people who won't or can't get to Midtown Atlanta.

(And thanks for your patience with the various audio glitches. The Hodges Room is a hostile environment for microphones; we're investing in some new equipment that should make things like this work better in the future.)

Rather than scribble notes on a flipchart and never see the pages again, Melissa Zbeeb took notes in real-time on a shared Google Doc. Here are the community suggestions from the afternoon session:

http://tr.im/wPbj

And from the evening session:

http://tr.im/wPbs

And, for good measure, here are my speaker notes printed before the events:

http://tr.im/wPaO

Keep the good ideas coming! There are half a dozen things we're going to do that we'd never even thought of. That's the value of a community... all of us are smarter than any of us.

Thanks to everyone who came out... and thanks to the ATDC staff who is making all this possible! Exciting days ahead!

We need images for the new Web site (yes, it's coming!), newsletters, a planned annual report, and other purposes. If you have a camera, some photography skills, and an interest in helping, please contact John Toon at 404-894-6986 or john.toon@innovate.gatech.edu. Thanks!

This is different.

ATDC is almost thirty years old. (We're going to have a thirty-year birthday bash next year; be sure to come!) And, throughout most of ATDC's history, it's been a very exclusive club. We usually get a couple of hundred applications a year, and usually accept about a dozen into membership.

That's a lousy way to make friends... since, by definition, we're telling a couple of hundred entrepreneurs per year that they're not good enough to be in our club.

But it's a great way to validate that the applicants who survive the process are solid companies. Companies worth investing in. Maybe even companies worth catching an airplane from Boston or California to invest in. The ATDC "seal of approval" meant that a company was automatically worth visiting when a VC was coming to town to see what was cooking in Atlanta.

And that model served ATDC well for a long time. Since there were never more than a few dozen members at any one time, the ATDC staff could provide some serious personal service to the entrepreneurs: Consulting. Coaching. Making connections. And, since this was such a high-touch model, it was nice to squeeze everyone in as neighbors... originally the O'Keefe building, then the "storage warehouse" on Tenth Street, and finally a set of three top-notch facilities. ATDC currently manages the second floor of the Centergy building, a set of life sciences "wet labs" in the ES&T building, and a corner of the Georgia Tech Savannah facility.

Then the market changed. Lots has been written about this elsewhere, and I assume you've read it... but everyone in the angel/venture capital chain took one step to the right, then sat down. It became a lot harder for a new company to attract VC money. At the same time, in certain sectors, it became much less necessary to attract VC money. For Internet deals: borrow every dime you can, write code like crazy, push the infrastructure up into the cloud, live on ramen noodles until you get someone, somewhere, to pay for something, then finance growth out of cash flow until investors (or acquirors) come looking for you. No VC required. Heck, maybe no offices required. If you're in the cloud, you're not keeping your servers under lock and key, and if you don't need a PBX (hello, Skype and cellphones)... you can run a pretty substantial operation via laptops and coffee shops.

Then you factor in Atlanta traffic. ATDC has always had "remote members"—in fact, today, about 40% of ATDC's members are not bricks-and-mortar tenants—but, honestly, they've always been second-class citizens. They don't get the same intense hands-on experience as the tenant companies. But if you live in Suwanee, or Alpharetta, or Kennesaw, the idea of driving to Midtown every day can be pretty soul-killing. (Not to mention if you live in Newnan, or Gainesville, or Bainbridge! More about that later.)

So, over the last few years, the ATDC model of "run 'em through a gauntlet and only the best will survive" has become less relevant. Some companies—some good companies—have chosen to bypass the gauntlet and simply not apply.

VentureLab

Let's switch gears and talk about VentureLab. I've been running VentureLab for a little over four years now. It's a different model. First off, VentureLab only works with technologies belonging to Georgia Tech. (There are minor exceptions for student projects, but not enough to affect this argument.)

So the "gauntlet" to get in is different... at the time of admission, VentureLab tries to determine if any startup could exist in your target space, not if yours is the potential winner. That's very different. If we decide that there's room for a startup, everything is focused around assembling the resources to build a successful one... business plan, management team, seed capital... all those things that companies already needed to have to survive the ATDC admission process. It's not a coincidence that the VentureLab exit criteria looked a lot like the ATDC entrance criteria.

Too many of you have heard me tell my tired joke that "If ATDC is an incubator, then VentureLab is pre-natal care." And it works. But... it's high-quality, high-cost pre-natal care that you can't have. (Unless you're based on Georgia Tech intellectual property.) Look at the quadrants below.

If you have Georgia Tech intellectual property, VentureLab would work with you at the earliest seed/concept stage. (We're not just talking pre-revenue... we're talking pre-incorporation and pre-patent-application!) And, if you survived to the relative maturity of "early-stage" (I'm stealing definitions from Lance Weatherby's blog here), you'd be a great candidate for ATDC.

But if you're weren't based on GT intellectual property? Look above, at that vacuum in the lower left.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and innumerable groups, linkages, and organizations have sprung up to help fill this one. (That link is to a blog post talking about those groups, and an animated version of that incredibly cluttered chart in the lower left.)

Today's announcement changes all that. We're not trying to take the place of any of those organizations—they're the symbol of a thriving Atlanta startup ecosystem, and we're not arrogant enough to think we're smarter than the crowd. But we are going to make ATDC available as an umbrella... if any of those organizations can benefit from using ATDC as a clearinghouse, or a sponsor, or just a place to meet—let me know.

(The VentureLab function for Georgia Tech startups doesn't go away... and neither do the employees... and neither does the GRA VentureLab money. It's now just one more program managed by ATDC.)

SBIR Assistance Program

I'm already nearing 1000 words, so I'll keep this short. How many of you are even aware of the Federal government's mandate that the eleven most profligate Federal agencies need to devote 2.5% of their R&D spending to small companies? Companies like yours?

How many of you have ever applied for it?

How many of you would even know where to look?

The state of Georgia pays for a free SBIR Assistance Program (which also helps with STTRs; don't ask) that has helped dozens of companies land tens of millions of dollars in Federal grants and contracts. But you've never called them, have you? Now, by merging this program into ATDC, every member will get asked "Have you looked at the latest solicitations? Any of them sound interesting? Need some help figuring out how to submit a proposal?"

Getting some of your taxes back from Uncle Sam with no loss of equity, and no incurring of debt. What could be better?

Scale

This post is already too long, and I'll come back to some of these topics in the future. But the challenge for the new expanded ATDC will be all about scale. Budgets are tight. We can't provide the same high-touch consulting services to 400 companies that we can to 40. And we certainly can't offer startup-friendly real estate deals to ten times as many companies; you won't all fit in our space!

We have some good ideas about this, but it will mean leveraging community involvement as a force multiplier. Some of you reading this will be helping out other entrepreneurs younger or less-experienced than you. Some of you already do this. Some of you will be asked to start.

And some of you won't be in Midtown Atlanta. By figuring out how to decouple our services from our real estate, we'll be figuring out how to offer access to ATDC in places other than Midtown (and Savannah). We'll want to see ATDC "circles" in Gwinnett, and Alpharetta, and Athens, and anywhere else in the state where there's sufficient entrepreneurial activity to justify it. Stay tuned for more information on how this will work. I can tell you right now—we'll need your help.

Whether you're a first-time entrepreneur needing someone to talk to, or you've already exited three companies and are willing to help the next generation, or somewhere in between... If you're a Georgia entrepreneur and this sounds interesting, please visit the new ATDC Web site at http://bit.ly/svYw6 and sign up!

Disclaimer

There's a professional disclaimer on this site, but I should probably repeat it here:

Any material posted on this site or other personal sites reflects my personal opinion and does not necessarily represent the position of Georgia Tech, the University System of Georgia, or the State of Georgia.

But, for those of you who are asking "Why are we doing this?"... you've just read my answer.

ATDC, one of the nation's largest, longest running, and best-known university-based technology accelerators, is expanding its mission. ATDC has been merged with Georgia Tech's VentureLab and with the Georgia SBIR Assistance Program. By pooling resources, the new ATDC has increased the staff available to serve its expanded mission of helping Georgia entrepreneurs launch and build successful technology companies. The change will allow ATDC to greatly extend its reach to serve more technology companies along multiple growth paths and at all stages of development.

Founded in 1980, ATDC has helped create millions of dollars in tax revenues by graduating more than 120 companies, which together have raised more than a billion dollars in outside financing. However, according to Stephen Fleming, vice provost at Georgia Tech, "the startup market has changed dramatically over the past few years. Many startup companies do not want or need to pursue venture funding. Some are not even seeking traditional office space. ATDC's new initiatives directly address the demands of today's startup environment."

ATDC will open its membership to all technology entrepreneurs in Georgia, from those at the earliest conception stage to the well-established, venture-fundable companies. "We're interested in any technology business opportunity" said David Sung, one of ATDC's startup catalysts and a former partner with H.I.G. Ventures. "There are many ways ATDC can help startups, from business coaching and providing networking opportunities to financing through angel investment, government grants and contracts, corporate partnerships, and classic bootstrapping. We will support all entrepreneurs, whatever path they may take, through their entire growth process."

ATDC will continue to offer traditional "bricks-and-mortar" incubation space on entrepreneur-friendly terms, both in midtown Atlanta and Savannah. The center will be expanding its recent SeedSpace offering of small single-office leases in Technology Square for the earliest entrepreneurs and will provide a variety of co-working spaces to promote casual interaction among entrepreneurs. Recognizing the sprawl of the Atlanta metro area, ATDC will offer programs outside the Perimeter where dense clusters of entrepreneurs can benefit from its services. ATDC will also take full advantage of social media to build connections with entrepreneurs across the entire state of Georgia.

Since 1999, the state-funded ATDC Seed Capital Fund has made equity investments in Georgia startup companies alongside angel investors and traditional venture firms. With this new merger, ATDC will also manage the Georgia Tech Edison Fund, an innovative investment fund established in 2007 which draws its resources from charitable donors who are interested in helping expand the entrepreneurial ecosystem surrounding Georgia Tech.

"ATDC has always been a focal point for entrepreneurship in Georgia" said Sig Mosley, president of Imlay Investments and member of ATDC's board of advisors. "With these moves, ATDC now is aligned to support the specific needs of the new startup environment. The open door policy is a strong, positive shift and reinforces ATDC's leadership role in the startup community not just within the Atlanta metro area, but throughout the entire state."

The merger of the three units will bring together a broader knowledge base to provide comprehensive services to Georgia's technology entrepreneurs.

"By working at the very earliest stage with university spinouts—not just pre-revenue but pre-incorporation—we have learned a great deal about the coaching required by brand-new entrepreneurial teams that are still establishing their business model" said Roberto Casas, previously assistant director of Georgia Tech's VentureLab. "To date, we've focused on startups based on Georgia Tech intellectual property. By merging with ATDC, we'll be able to offer similar services to any Georgia startup, whether connected to Georgia Tech or not."

ATDC, the former Georgia Tech VentureLab, and the SBIR Assistance program are part of the Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI2) at Georgia Tech, which helps Georgia enterprises improve their competitiveness through the application of science, technology and innovation. Stephen Fleming, the former head of Georgia Tech VentureLab, was recently promoted to vice provost of Georgia Tech overseeing all of EI2. He will serve as the initial director of the new ATDC.

"Despite the economic downturn, it's still a great time to build a startup company in Georgia" said Fleming. "The last four years have seen an explosion of groups and organizations supporting the early-stage entrepreneur. With this expansion, we're rebooting the franchise of ATDC as the hub of technology entrepreneurship in Georgia. We hope to work with everyone, at any stage, along any path, to accelerate more technology startups and weave them into the economic fabric of Georgia."

All employees of ATDC, Georgia Tech VentureLab, and the SBIR Assistance Program will be retained in the consolidation. The new ATDC organization will continue to assist Georgia Tech faculty members and other research staff in forming new companies, and will continue to provide assistance to any Georgia small business seeking SBIR funding.

About ATDC
ATDC helps Georgia entrepreneurs launch and build successful technology companies. Founded in 1980, the Advanced Technology Development Center has provided business incubation and acceleration services to hundreds of Georgia startups—most of which are not based on Georgia Tech research, but which benefit from the close proximity to the university. ATDC currently has three facilities; two at Georgia Tech's main campus in Atlanta, and one at Georgia Tech's satellite campus in Savannah.

About SBIR Assistance Program of Georgia
The state of Georgia has one of the nation's leading SBIR/STTR assistance programs which, since being established in 2005, has educated and helped hundreds of Georgia entrepreneurs access these sources of federal funds. With the program's direct assistance, 150 companies have submitted one or more proposals resulting in more than $30 million in federal awards. By merging into ATDC, the program will be able to interact with more entrepreneurs across the state, including those who may have never considered applying for federal grants, and bring more of these awards into Georgia's startup ecosystem.

About VentureLab
In 2001, Georgia Tech became a founding member of VentureLab, a program of the Georgia Research Alliance (GRA). VentureLab helps build spinout companies around cutting-edge university research. With its emphasis on technologically-grounded business analysis, access to early-stage funds, and recruitment of experienced management, Georgia Tech's VentureLab has launched more than two dozen successful companies and serves as a model for other universities seeking to commercialize their discoveries. GRA's VentureLab Program now extends to four other research universities in Georgia; with an investment of some $13 million from GRA, more than 150 Georgia-based startups have been created around university intellectual property in the state. GRA also recently launched a new venture fund to make equity investments into these spinout companies.

If you're a Georgia entrepreneur and this sounds interesting, please visit the new ATDC Web site at http://bit.ly/svYw6 and sign up!

(Click for full-size image.)

Those of you at the Atlanta CEO Exchange this evening may have seen the lapel button I was wearing. It generated a lot of attention.

If you've been paying attention to the buzz around Atlanta, it's been almost a year since Jeff Haynie moved west, and left us his farewell message as to "What’s wrong with the Atlanta startup ecosystem and how to fix it."

If you haven't been paying attention to the conversation, here's a quick guide to catching up:

• Jeff Haynie
• Urvaksh Karkaria
• Scott Burkett
• Lance Weatherby
• Sanjay Parekh
• Russell Jurney
• Paul Graham
• Greg Foster
• Fred Wilson

Okay... ever since Hayes Microcomputer went bust, there's been great wailing and gnashing of teeth about how Atlanta isn't Silicon Valley. In my previous role as a venture capitalist, as my not-quite previous role running VentureLab, and in my brand-new role as the chief of economic development for Georgia Tech, one of the questions I'm most frequently asked is "How can we make Atlanta the next Silicon Valley?"

Not to put too fine a point on it — but that's a foolish question. Silicon Valley is a unique aberration... a confluence of people, ideas, cash, and culture that will probably never be duplicated. And it's futile to try.

But, for most entrepreneurs and most companies, it's also irrelevant. Build a fabulous product that delights customers while solving a real problem, and geography is irrelevant. To quote Fred Wilson from his post above, "You can build a great startup in any of the dozen to two dozen startup hotbeds around the world. Pick a place you want to live and work and possibly raise a family. And then get busy."

Atlantans, repeat after me:

• We're not Silicon Valley.
• We don't want to be Silicon Valley.
• We don't need to be Silicon Valley.

If you agree, stop me and ask for a "Not The Valley" lapel button. If anybody wants them, I'll print stickers, too. And, if you disagree... well, I grew up in Atlanta, and Delta has been my hometown airline for my entire life. For me, they'll never have a slogan as memorable as this one from the 1960s and 1970s:

Delta is ready when you are.