This was originally posted on Atlanta Ventures, but also wanted to repost here.
We are launching a new podcast at Atlanta Ventures. It is called Five & Thrive: we provide five minutes of quality information, so you can thrive in the upcoming week. Read below for more details of why we’re starting it and more.
Two weeks ago, I was headed down Spring Street to a show at The Fox and started talking with the Uber driver. She had a unique accent and shared that she was from Gabon. In the midst of our conversation, she made a profound comment I think about often. Weaving through traffic underneath the construction of midtown, she said “when I go back home to Gabon, everything is exactly the same, but every six months this city completely changes – and I love that about this city.” It is so true. We were in between 10th and 5th street heading South at this point, and the sheer addition of housing, restaurants, and office space is energizing.
This growth is fueled by jobs which are fueled by entrepreneurs.
The amount of news, products, entrepreneurs, and companies spawning in Atlanta – and the overall Southeast – is exhilarating.
Ten years ago, finding five companies a month to present at Atlanta Startup Village took significant time. Now company news, funding announcements, and updates are prolific. For the clearest evidence, signup to Hypepotamus and Atlanta Inno for multi-weekly updates of the latest funding announcements and major technology news.
Those quality outlets cover high-caliber headlines, but I believe there is a market ripe for a different layer of information that has additional context.
One of the most often asked questions we receive at Atlanta Ventures is, “What exciting news and companies are coming up?” The answer to that question is so dependent on the question asker. If a Head of Product is asking, the answer is completely different than if it’s a Partner at a private equity firm or a VP of Sales.
At Atlanta Ventures, we’re able to allocate well beyond the majority of our time meeting with entrepreneurs, students, and high-quality talent…all at different stages. After a certain number of meetings, a flywheel of connectivity starts. Learning the stories of each individual, idea, and company is a true privilege as now there is serious life-changing information that can be exchanged. For example, here is how one employee picked the right rocket ship and a life (and family) has forever been changed. Paying it forward is a core value at Atlanta Ventures and when paired with the perspective that the universe is filled with abundance, the opportunities are endless.
As the Atlanta Ventures team meets with hundreds of people a year, the ideas for greater connectivity and ways to pay it forward are raised. How can we extend our reach? How can we make sure each individual we come into contact with has the maximum information available to make potential career or company defining decisions?
The short answer is a five-minute, weekly podcast highlighting the most interesting news, companies, products, and entrepreneurs all throughout Atlanta and the Southeast, and we just launched our first episode of Five & Thrive.
Why another podcast?
We are in our third year of podcasting at The Atlanta Story and have learned so much. One major learning is the scalability of conversations. When we publish an interview, thousands of Atlantans have immediate access to it and hundreds listen that day.
There are two major problems with most podcasts: first, almost all are just too long. The time investment is significant for most and depending on the show, the “insights per minute” (a term learned from a16z) are typically few and far between. Two, and this is for the folks making them, but there are too many constraints to production. Thank goodness to Jacey Cadet who co-produces the Atlanta Story with her talented team. Each month we have to find a brave soul to be interviewed, coordinate time, and then do significant post-production to get a finished podcast out…then market it!
The same way the city of Atlanta physically changes every six months, so does the progress of companies and startups, but even faster. Each phase of growth applies differently to the end user or listener and we want to scale our impact and the unique information we exchange daily with our community.
Please listen to Five & Thrive and subscribe today!