Sherra Suggests: StartAtlanta

Date:
Weekend event starting Friday (1/28) at 6pm and ending on Sunday evening after the 4pm Reveal presentations. Teams typically work late into the night on Friday and Saturday.

Cost:
$45* - save $10 off the regular $55 price if you register via https://bit.ly/hrwj2W... (https://bit.ly/hrwj2W) before January 21st using the Discount Code: AGDC (meals included in the price)

*As with all "Sherra Suggests" events, RSVP here to tell this group you are going so we can watch for each other but register at the link above to pay and officially register.

Location:
ATDC at Technology Square
75 5th Street, NW
Suite 202
Atlanta, GA 30308

Visit https://startatlanta.o... (https://startatlanta.org/) for details. Registration from this link will be at the regular price.

A few months ago, a small cadre of Atlanta-area entrepreneurs came together to resurrect Atlanta Startup Weekend (ASW). If you're not familiar with ASW, talented entrepreneurs and business professionals come together on a Friday to pitch their startup ideas. Teams are formed around the most popular concepts, and the rest of the weekend is spent turning those pie-in-sky ideas into web-based reality. By Sunday evening's reveal night, Atlanta is home to a number of creative, new technology companies. By all accounts, it is one of Atlanta's most popular, exciting events.

After extensive deliberation about past ASW events, however, a consensus had emerged: much of what ASW creates occurs in a vacuum. There’s little understanding of market needs, input from investors or business leaders, no pre or post-weekend development process, and various time-consuming inefficiencies. To best address these and other deficiencies, we ultimately decided to jettison the ASW program entirely and build our own. Enter StartAtlanta.org (learn more about our vision - The Next Generation of ASW). Sure, starting from scratch presents greater challenges, but we're betting our group's newfound flexibility and enhanced scope will pay off for the community. Besides, we're not about shying away from challenges with big potential payoffs, right?

Whether you're a developer, designer,* marketer, sales pro, strategist, networker, accountant, lawyer, investor, architecter, what-have-you, there's a place for you at this year's Start Atlanta, January 28-30th. More to the point, the weekend is only the tip of the iceberg- a symbol of our united efforts to support our shared mission to build an ecosystem to support innovation, in cooperation with Startup Riot, Shotput Ventures, Startup Lounge -- and other serious organizations with a complementary mission. Over time, we envision our website--and this group--as the coordinating force behind long-term success in our goals. Together, we are stronger. As Start Atlanta, we are real.

*Designers wanted. Even if you don't have an idea ready to pitch, go find an idea you want to be part of and use your talent to help make it real. The experience will likely inspire you to pitch next time, and we all know the world needs more design entrepreneurs. (FYI - there is a new Case Study category for the SEED Awards (https://www.meetup.com/atlantagraphicdesign/pages/www.SEEDAwards.com) in 2011 just for Design Entrepreneurship if you are a designer who has already launched an idea in 2009 or 2010.)