Blog

Our Shotput Ventures open house was a big success last night. We had over 150 people show up and network for a couple hours. Here are a couple good links:

• Twitter stream
• Paul Stamatiou - Shotput Ventures to Grow Tech Startups in Atlanta

We're excited about applications opening up on March 6th. 

Hi, I'm Dave Wright, Founder and President of Jungle Disk, but you can call me Jungle Dave.

When  I moved to Atlanta a few years back to start Jungle Disk, more than one person thought I was crazy for leaving California. However in addition to the personal reasons I had for moving, I really felt that Atlanta had all the raw ingredients needed to build a great Internet business. It has been amazing to see how much the startup community here has grown and come together in just the past few years. Through blogs, twitter, and local events like Open Coffee and Startup Riot local entrepreneurs have more opportunity than ever to network, share and work together.

Since Jungle Disk was acquired last year I’ve been looking for opportunities to give back to the community and help other local startups. Shotput Ventures is one way that I plan to do that. While Jungle Disk is still a full time (plus) job, I'm excited to be able to offer some of my time and experience to help new teams get off the ground.

With my own success bootstrapping Jungle Disk, I know how far a great team with a small amount of capital can go in a short period of time with the right experience and resources available to them. The Shotput Ventures format makes a lot of sense to me. Most startups don't need lots of money or a huge staff. Both are simply a distraction at such an early stage. Instead they need to focus on building a great product while having all the resources they need at their fingertips. Starting a company from scratch is a fun, stressful, exciting, frightening, but ultimately very rewarding experience that I hope to share with all the teams this summer.

I just recently joined the team at Shotput Ventures and it is hard to fully express my excitement. First of all, I know most of the partners very well and have the utmost respect for each of them. The wealth of experience, contacts and guidance that they each can provide to a new venture could be the difference between success and failure.  

Personally, I offer entrepreneurs the right combination of financial resources, business guidance, and expert resources to leverage their assets using internet marketing technologies. I enjoy helping entrepreneurs take advantage of all the web has to offer, turning potential into success. 

Currently, I am actively involved as an investor, advisor and board member in multiple companies through my investment company Nicol Capital LLC. These companies include BLiNQ Media (CEO and Co-Founder), 360i LLC (Co-Founder, Investor and Advisor), SearchIgnite (Founding Investor and Advisor), Opera Atlanta (Investor and Strategic Advisor), Kudzu Interactive & Snapfinger (Investor and Board Member), RHBrands (Investor and Board Member), and INCNOW (Owner and Board Member). Other companies that I have worked with over the past several years include Esgut which was sold to Social Gaming Network (SGN) in early 2008 and LastMinuteGolfer.com which was sold to Comcast Interactive in late 2008.  

Back in 2007, I founded the Entrepreneurship Leadership Event held bi-annually at Emory University's Goizueta Business School where we bring together undergraduate and graduate students with local Atlanta entrepreneurs. The focus of the meetings is on education and networking. We most recently have held sessions in partnership with Pink Magazine, Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO), other local businesses and entrepreneurs. Our next event is going to be held March 26th at the Goizueta Business School and hosted by Shotput Ventures and its partners.  More information to come soon! 

As a partner in Shotput Ventures, I am looking forward to working with this summer's portfolio companies and helping them to achieve business success.  Life as an entrepreneur is one of the greatest business experiences and I look forward to experiencing this with you! 

Dave Williams, Partner Shotput Ventures

We have a new LinkedIn Group for Shotput Ventures. Please join it!

Please join our Facebook Group and connect with other like-minded entrepreneurs.

Shotput Ventures has been in the news quite a bit recently! Please check out these great articles:

• TechDrawl - Entrepreneurs Need to Suffer
• Atlanta Business Chronicle - Shotput Ventures Launching Entrepreneurial Program
• TechJournal South - Startup Accelerator Shotput Ventures Launching in Atlanta

Also, there's been lots of good Shotput commentary on Twitter:
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=shotput+ventures

Shotput Ventures has a new logo courtesy of LogoBee.com:

Let us know what you think!

There are two schools of thought in this economic climate about launching a start-up.  One is that you must be crazy.  The walls are crashing down and you’re trying to start something new?  Save your pennies, buckle down and maybe once things come around we can talk more about this “new idea” of yours. 

As logical as that may sound, a small group of optimistic entrepreneurs* will tell you that this is a perfect time to launch a start-up.  Some of the best companies of our generation were started in tough economic times.  HP was formed in 1939 in the midst of the Great Depression.  When Microsoft was started, in 1975, the economy was in the crapper.  So why did they succeed?  Because a good idea with great team behind it will succeed in any economy. 

This is why I was excited to hear about, and ultimately join, Shotput Ventures.  I started a web design shop with my college roommate (Raj Choudhury) in 1998 while attending UNC Charlotte.  We had nothing more than an idea, a text editor and whatever credit cards a 22 year-old could get his hands on.  Ten years later in March of 2008 we sold Spunlogic, which had grown to a 75-person agency in Atlanta working with brands like The Home Depot, Coca-Cola and UPS, to a private equity group that was putting together a new agency model (called Engauge).  I’m now running the digital portion of that agency, with the same people that helped me make Spunlogic a success. 

Born in Chicago but having grown up in Atlanta, I’ve always been disappointed by the lack of start-ups that came out of our city.  We have a lot of smart young people in this town and some great universities, so why do you have to be in Silicon Valley to get funding and get your idea off the ground?  Shotput intends to fill this gap, or at least start the process.  And I’m thrilled to be a part of it. 

Jeff Hilimire 

* Actually, if there’s an entrepreneur that isn’t optimistic, I haven’t met him/her.

Things have been busy at Shotput Ventures! We just finalized our team of partners by adding Mitch Free and Jeff Hilimire. Both are accomplished entrepreneurs that have started a company from scratch and generated significant returns for shareholders.

In addition to finalizing our team, we also just published our summer 2009 program timeline as well as more details on applying. We're looking forward to applications in March and starting the program in May. Let us know in the comments if we can answer any questions.