Recently I was in Nashville at Southland SE, a venture conference organized by Launch Tennessee, a public-private partnership that’s the operating arm of Gov. Bill Haslam’s $50 million INCITE (Innovation, Commercialization, Investment, Technology and Entrepreneurship) initiative. The fund partners with private investment firms to grow early-stage companies.
Southland involves the entire region in an intentional way. Launch Tennessee CEO Charlie Brock says, “Launch Tennessee is on record as having the single goal of making Tennessee the No. 1 place in the Southeast to launch and grow a business. But we don’t do that alone. Part of making Tennessee stand out is having an ecosystem of investors, entrepreneurs and mentors so our region has the density to create successful companies.”
Start-ups from 10 states participated in Southland. Atlanta sent more than any other city. Georgia Tech entrepreneur Candace Mitchell of Techturized (hair care social network for African-American women) kicked off the first round of investor pitches, followed by emerging Atlanta businesses like Voxa (email productivity). It’s not surprising that Atlanta entrepreneurs had such a big piece of the stage at Southland. Atlanta is, after all, the economic powerhouse in the South.
Yet where Tennessee is undeniably leading Atlanta and Georgia is in ambition.
What is Georgia doing to intentionally guide the development of entrepreneurship? We have bundles of individual success stories — like Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center, Atlanta Tech Village and Flashpoint for startups.
But what more could we do to cultivate our technology culture? Quite a bit.
Southland, for example, took the initiative to involve Pando Daily, a Silicon Valley media company. I applaud the ambition Southland showed to not only unite the region, but also the West and East coasts in one entrepreneurial and investment ecosystem. The parade of Silicon Valley personalities on stage at Southland provided an opportunity to create a larger, bi-coastal conversation around tech culture.
Investment and entrepreneurship is a global sport. Investors representing Accel of Palo Alto, Calif., Paladin Capital of Washington, D.C., and Mosley Ventures of Atlanta sat at picnic tables to swap ideas over Hattie B’s hot chicken. The conference provided a unique setting for an infusion of Silicon Valley with a splash of Southern Comfort.
As the conference develops in years to come, I hope to have local heroes like the Dabbiere brothers of Airwatch (mobile device management), Ben Chestnut of Mailchimp (email marketing) or Bill Nussey, whose story of selling Silverpop (digital marketing) to IBM is one the region can relate to. These are stories that can stand at ease alongside imported Southland awesomeness like Phil Libin, the CEO of Evernote (personal digital organizer).
The South harbors much value in U.S. history and much of its opportunity, from biotech to fintech to transportation. Al Gore, a keynote speaker at Southland, suggested jokingly that we should call our region the “Silicon Gulch.”
But should we be “silicon” anything?
With an open attitude and embracing entrepreneurialism, we can invite personalities to parade and play their part in the big brass band of business. Southland provides an early promise of what can happen when we get a lot more intentional about curating Southern culture and valuing it within a broader collaborative discourse.
Lisa Calhoun is founder of Write2Market, a tech communications firm with offices in Atlanta and Austin.
