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51 companies, 3 minute pitches, networking, great chatter and fantastic contacts. Atlanta has it going on!  Joel Smith and I had the total privilege of attending #StartupRiot (http://www.startupriot.com) February 19 at the twelve hotel hotspot at Atlantic Station.  Unlike most coder-orientated events (the awkward stare downs and pizza, yes, even in the morning), it started off with great conversation, warm reception and amazing energy.

The event is great for startups and investors alike. For startups, you get 3 minutes on stage to pitch your concept, brand, whatever, for funding, user-adoption, potential partners or job hunters. If you can’t say it in the 3 minutes, your business sux anyway.  It’s great prep to hone your message in just a few points. As an entrepreneur, the event was the perfect shot in the arm, free of service providers (love you guys, but stay out of the bull pen)..no insurance sales people (except for the startups in the space), no financial experts and no commercial brokers.

For investors, they love it.  51 companies present in 3 mins, giving quick insight into who they are,/what they’re up to..totally avoiding the coffee/hour long/waste-of-my-time conversation when they find out you just have a logo (vaporware), no customers (adoption-less) or worse, are a total idiot.

We presented on ShoutNow, and true to form, I got everyone laughing in the first 30 seconds…which is a personal goal of mine every presentation. Yes! You can check out the clip below with our presentation.  So what did I learn (if anything?) from the event?

After 51 pitches, here are three of my thoughts (please feel free to skip):

• Be comfortable. If you can’t talk about your idea with passion in a comfortable (not a million mile a minute chat), don’t present…find someone else too or find another idea (or practice in front of your grandma?).  Too many companies fell flat b/c they were so damn up tight, or talking to fast….i think one guy took two breaths the whole time…he literally looked like he would pass out.
• $1 billion? In 3 minutes, who the hell cares if you have a $1 or $1 billion opp…talk about the problem or solution, not how much money you’ll make…that’s for later, when u get invited to do a 10 minute pitch…plus, we know you made that s*$t up in 3 mins.  I remember the $15 billion slide, but not the product, company or problem…I remember every company who talked about the problem/product in a conversational way.
• Twitter Idiots At these events, everyone is twittering now…including angels and vc’s.  As soon as you get off stage, respond to people’s tweets about your stuff.
• Stop the Buzz Words. If I hear pipeline sales Saas all in the same phrase with interoperability, SOA or business intelligence, I’ll scream, lol.  Everyone uses them, but does anyone really know what they mean?

Props to Fuzzy Logic (the special toy bear guy), Lizzer (the embeddable plugin), Elf Island (the tweener quest game with a social impact), 40billion (40 entrepreneurs asking 40 friends/fam for money), Rank’Em (voting up/down music catalogue by fans who know the artists), WomBeat (business listing service with 1 million listing in Florida), and Southeastern Safety (gps enabled device to save worker’s lives when they fall off the electric pole)…great presentations/demos/explanations.

The night ended at Nelson Mullins Law Firm, a beautiful place, on a highrise, in the middle of Atlanta, with views reaching to Florida. Pretty swanky…check out the views in the videos below (uploading right now, I’ll post after it encodes).

Thanks @sanjay (pronounced sunjay) for the recruitment via twitter…and the invite to apply for ShotPut ventures…totally looking forward to hang in Atlanta and build some great applications.  I hope StartupRiot gets syndicated to other cities…especially ones with communities about the size of Atlanta that need the valley-style pitch events.