Welcome to Five & Thrive: a weekly podcast highlighting the Southeast’s most interesting news, entrepreneurs, and information of the week, all under 5 minutes.

My name is Jon Birdsong and I’m with Atlanta Ventures.

Y’all we are going to need to shorten this intro from here on out as there is just so much commerce going on in Atlanta and the Southeast. Let’s get into it.

Blog Post of the Week:

The blog post of the week and I don’t know if all this press is a direct correlation with news from last week of Andreeson Horowitz investing $350M in Adam Neumann’s new apartment company, but Neumann’s vision has already been executed on and by Birmingham’s lodestar entrepreneur: Bill Smith of Shipt fame which sold for $550M in 2017 to Target started Landing which is a very similar concept to Neumann’s – just 3 years earlier – where a community of residents can pick and choose between fully furnished apartments across the country. TechCrunch did an interview with Bill this week and it’s fantastic. We’ve linked to it in the show notes but if you’re a student of entrepreneurship, go-to-market, product packaging and more, watch how these two entrepreneurs duel it out for years to come – and make sure to add butter and salt to the popcorn.

Product of the Week:

I recently caught up with CEO of PressSports, Conrad Cornell at the SouthSource Tortuga party on the West Side and he shared that they just launched a completely revamped product at PressSports. I downloaded the app which has over 10,000 reviews with an average rating of 4.9 on the app store. High school and college athletes download Press Sports to start, document, and organize the digital portfolio of their careers so friends and coaches can engage and connect with them outside of the traditional social media outlets.  

Companies Coming Up:  

Where do we even begin here? The Inc 5000 list came out and there are too many on the list to name for this short podcast. Atlanta Ventures Founder, David Cummigns put together a list of 30 that have a three year growth rate of at least 300%. Not only is the Inc 5000 list a great annual water mark for growth, one would be hard pressed to find a better list to prospect fast, growing companies. We’ve highlighted several on this podcast including Stord, PrizePicks, Neighborly Software, SingleOps and several others. One we haven’t explored in depth is the overall number 2 on the list, right out of Atlanta which is SnapNurse. More on that rocketship in the future! Take a look at the list through links in the show notes.

Question of the Week:

We get to talk to so many investors and entrepreneurs week in and week out and several recurring questions come up. Here is one where we got this week from an investor and it was: how do y’all measure product-market fit. This is where art meets science in startups, but to me, product-market fit is 10 unaffiliated (so not your Uncle or roommate) customers who raves about your product AND there is a clear line of sight to a repeatable, scalable customer acquisition model. I know that still leaves many questions but let’s start this new segment with that answer this week.  

Raise a Glass:

Several raise a glass moments this past week: Michael Gottfried and Ashish Mistry raised $2M for PCKL (gotta love a 4 letter domain). PCKL is serving the massively growing market of Pickle Ball. Shop for paddles, balls, and accessories. PCKL joins the burgeoning D2C empire with their first company Piper golf balls.

Motivo, led by Rachel McCrickard, raised $14M led by Cox Enterprises to tackle the shortage of therapists by connecting mental health organizations with virtual clinical supervisors. Congrats to Rachel and team.

Lastly, legendary entrepreneur, Bill Nussey joined TechSquare Ventures and Engage. We’ve covered TechSquare and Engage on before this podcast. He led SilverPop to 600 employees and their eventual sale to IBM. Bill wrote an eloquent LinkedIn post worth reading that we put in the show notes.

Annnnd, that’s 5 minutes.

Thank you for listening to Five and Thrive. We provide 5 minutes of quality information, so you can thrive in the upcoming week. Please subscribe to the show and spread the good word!

Resources discussed in this episode:

Blog Post of the Week: Bil Smith: The Anti Adam Neumann

Product of the Week: Press Sports

Company Coming Up: Inc 5000 Atlanta
David Cummings Growth of 300% or more

Raise a Glass:
PCKL Raises $2M

Motivo Raised $14M
Bill Nussey Joins Tech Square Ventures and Engage

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