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November 17, 2022
🚀 Beta | 🗓️ Event | ​🎉 Alpha Product | 🧑‍💼 Jobs | ⬆️ Market Analysis

E25 | iStory, Any Distance, Atlanta Startup Convos, FanFundr, Carbon Footprint Market Analysis

Introduction: 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.

Beta Product of the Week: Just yesterday morning, the iStory team launched their product on ProductHunt and it has been well received. Stephen Malik, Chris Hall, and team, have put an interactive product out there to help content creators improve audience experience through voice. How do they do it? Imagine you have a website that sells a product, with the easy use of iStory, you can add your unique voice to any part of the website. So as a user experiences your site, whether it be a video demo or a specific web page, adding audio with analytics is performed by iStory. Check out their website, demo, and if it peaks your interest enough, upvote them on Product Hunt. 

The Second Beta Product of the week is Any Distance who just launched their 3.0 version which includes features making it the most safe and secure activity tracking app in the market, while still keeping their superior design. If you run, bike, or walk, Any Distance is the app for you to prioritize celebration and maintain motivation.  

Event of the Week: Mark your calendars for the last Atlanta Startup Convos of the year on December 7th. It’s amazing how much that MeetUp group has organically grown with over 2700 members in the MeetUp. Three very exciting products will be shown including Gatsby which we’ve covered on this pod before, Lavender, and The Gig Room. Jacey Cadet of Atlanta Ventures runs and hosts this informative and insightful event. Mark your calendars today.   

Alpha Product of the Week: This week’s Alpha product of the week comes from entrepreneur Drew Williams of FANFUNDR. The product is still early, but the community driven mechanisms are very interesting and I believe Drew as entrepreneur will create some magic in the space. Here is how it works: let’s say you’re a fan of an artist and you have an idea about creating a unique event, product, or piece of content you’d like to see your cherished artist produce. With FANFUNDR, the mechanisms are in place to dream the idea, generate a petition, gain a groundswell of fans who love the idea, begin collecting payments to fund the concept, and generate enough momentum to make the experience or product happen. This product is still very early and Drew is entertaining several ways to make the process seamless, even looking at digital assets to purchase as a way to kick start the momentum. Regardless, check out FanFundr, sign up for the product updates, and keep in touch with the evolution of this journey.  

Companies Worth Applying Too:  This week I was speaking with a junior engineer looking to work for an early stage company. Outside of suggesting different engineering groups he should connect with as well as combing through some of the fastest growing companies in Georgia on the Inc 5000, the Atlanta Tech Village job boards came to mind. I went to check it out and in addition to several Carpool Logistics roles we mentioned last week, there are more companies hiring including ePlannerPro, ByteCheck, and more coming! Shout out to Irena and Aly for keeping this job board fresh! 

Market Analysis of the Week: For those who have listened or read more of our content from Atlanta Ventures, you know the importance of markets. One of our very talented interns, Divya Pinnaka, put together an insightful analysis on the carbon footprint market not only today but in 10 years. She also highlights the companies already working on the problem. The saying is “pick a niche to get rich” is true, but picking a niche that will grow into an even bigger market is the cream of the crop. To me the carbon footprint market is vast. In Greenzie’s sense, it would be like outdoor robotics, but even then an entrepreneur still needs to focus on a very real and specific pain point. In Greenzie’s case, the pain point is the cost of repetitive labor solved by automating 52-72 commercial lawn mowers. What is that equivalent in the carbon footprint market? Only additional customer discovery and research will tell. Start with Divya’s post, linked 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:

Beta Product of the Week: iStory, Any Distance

Event of the Week: Meetup with Gatsby, Lavender, and Gig Room

Alpha Product of the Week:  FANFUNDR

Companies Worth Applying Too: ATV Job Board

Market Analysis of the Week: Carbon Footprint Market Analysis