sarp centel

Atlanta may not be the heart of technology in the U.S. but there are many opportunities to meet like-minded people that are interested in technology here. For instance, Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs Meeting is one of the largest ones with 1000 members. It’s a monthly meeting, where a subject is chosen each month and a few speakers will present on that subject. The one I attended was on iPhone Development, people who developed iPhone applications shared their experiences and gave statistics regarding sales of their applications to an audience of 50-60 people in the room.

Another one is BarCamp Atlanta, this is a yearly event in “unconference” format. There is no predefined agenda, so participants sign-up on the sheets that are hanged on the wall to talk about a subject they want. This becomes the “schedule” of the event. I attended sessions on Erlang, distributed version control, screen scraping with Ruby, iPhone SDK and witnessed how to make ice-cream in a minute using liquid nitrogen!

Overall, these events are great opportunities to meet people with same interests. Reading about technology companies starting in garages, BarCamp felt as if people were showing the cool stuff they’ve built in their garages. I can understand how Steve Wozniak must have felt when he was showing in Homebrew Computer Club the computer he built.

What I like about these events is that they are supported by ATDC, a technology business incubator part of Georgia Tech. They take place right on campus and it’s very convenient for students to attend!

These are the ones I attended so far, but there are more events on meetup.com if you’re interested: Atlanta PHP User Group, Atlanta Web Design Group, Atlanta Cloud Computing User’s Group, Atlanta Python Programmers, Atlanta Ruby Meetup Group etc.

Here are some quotes that I’d like to remember from a book (Founders at Work) on interviews with founders of technology companies:

On hope and persistence

Joe Kraus, cofounder of Excite

“We were so naive we didn’t know we could fail, and therefore we almost had to succeed.”

Evan Williams, cofounder of Blogger.com

“I see way too many people give up in the startup world. .. I don’t even hear the first “no” that somebody says.”

“I was always hallucinogenically optimistic. That’s the only reason I kept going.”

Ron Gruner, founder of Shareholder.com

“Things never work out right the first time. You’ve always got to do it two or three times to get it right. And things always go wrong. So persistence is the key to success.”

On following your gut

Ray Ozzie, creator of Lotus Notes

“You take advice from a lot of people, and that advice is not always the best advice… So I might rely more on my intuition if I were to do it again.”

Evan Williams, cofounder of Blogger.com

“I think one of the things that kills great things so often is compromise - letting people talk you out of what your gut is telling you… If everyone agrees, it’s probably because you’re not doing anything original.”

On dreamers

Brewster Kahle, cofounder of Alexa

“San Francisco is full of dreamers. It’s the people with the new ideas. It may be bad, they may be inappropriate, they may fail, but I love the idea that we can do something new and different - something that hasn’t been done before, something that’s going to affect a lot of people”

Steve Perlman, cofounder of WebTV

“… there’s kind of an attitude here [Silicon Valley] that people should try things, and, if they fail, if they understand why they failed, they may actually be a better investment in the next round…”

On venture capitalists 

Evan Williams, cofounder of Blogger.com

“Venture capitalists would tell you that they’d rather fund a great team than a great idea. The reason is that if they have a bad idea, great teams can figure out a better one. Mediocre people even with a great idea can screw it up in its execution.”

Ron Gruner, founder of Shareholder.com

“You want to generate two things when you’re looking for money: One is a sense of exclusivity, saying, “This is a very special kind of deal and not everybody is going to get into it.” And secondly, a sense of urgency, so you can people to make a decision.”

On life

Paul Graham, cofounder of Viaweb

“Apparently sprinters reach their highest speed right out of the block, and spend the rest of the race slowing down. The winners slow down the least.”

“Another advantage of telling the truth is that you don’t have to remember what you’ve said.”

James Hong, cofounder of HotorNot

“Happiness is reality compared to expectations.”

Funny

Mitchell Kapor, cofounder of Lotus Development

It was the ’60s; I have the pictures to prove it. I don’t remember any of it, but as someone said, if you can remember the ’60s, then you weren’t there.