Agency and Soft Skills in the AI Era
With each passing day, it becomes clearer that AI is making the intelligence side of startups and entrepreneurship more accessible, distributed, and abundant. As that happens, the real differentiat…
Author: David Cummings
David Cummings is a Partner and co-founder of Atlanta Ventures and co-founder of Pardot (acquired by Salesforce). He has invested in and supported hundreds of early-stage startups in the Southeast and writes regularly about entrepreneurship, SaaS, and the Atlanta tech ecosystem.
Using AI to Find Your Best Prospects
Last week, I was talking with an entrepreneur who shared how he was using AI to do a much better job of identifying which prospects he should pursue. It is easy to get a list of names and companies…
Fall in Love With the Problem, Not the Solution
There’s a phrase in startup land that really resonates with me: stay close to the problem. As an entrepreneur, it’s easy to become enamored with ideas, visions, and what could be. While all of thos…
The Personal AI Brain
Recently, I was talking to an entrepreneur who shared that one of his side projects was building a personal AI brain. The goal was to process information across every area he cared about, automate …
Why Great Founders Keep Selling
One of the recurring debates I have encountered is around the role of founder-led sales. Founder-led sales is the idea that, in the early days and even the early years of a startup, the founder sho…
The Real Return Standard for Most Venture Investors
If you read the startup blogs and listen to the most popular startup podcasts, it is easy to think that the only way to raise money in the current climate is with an idea that can become worth tens…
Right to win Competitive Positioning
I’ve always enjoyed learning about different business best practices, strategy documents, and ways of thinking through a company game plan. One example I’ve seen more frequently over the last year …
Combine a National VC with a Regional VC
Last month, I was talking to an entrepreneur about his upcoming fundraising round, and he shared an approach that I hadn’t heard before. His ultimate goal for the funding round was to secure …
Non-Horror Story Lessons from Pitching VCs
Over the last week, I’ve enjoyed reading some of the different VC horror stories sparked by Greg Isenberg’s tweet. There’s everything from crazy bad behavior to unusual interactions to a variety of…
The Backend-Loaded Nature of Startup Value Creation
Recently, I saw a headline in The Wall Street Journal that said, “$3.6 Million an Hour and Other Ways to Measure Musk’s Fortune.” A catchy headline like this definitely grabs your attention. It als…