Lisa Calhoun: Welcome to the Atlanta Startup Podcast. I am so glad you’re here. This is Anastasia Nicole. She is amazing. She is the new managing partner at Techstars Atlanta. So thanks for coming on the podcast to talk about what’s going on, all things Atlanta and startups.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: No, thank you for having me. I’m super excited to be here. Can’t wait to get into the conversation.
Lisa Calhoun: Me too. You know, there’s so much going on in Atlanta. Techstars is adding such a great vibe. What I wanna do, though, is wind it back, and for those in the community that don’t yet know you, I want to focus a little bit on Anastasia. Let’s, let’s rewind. Tell me what you were doing before you joined Techstars.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Oh, so before I joined Techstars in this iteration, I was at Techstars. So I was the managing director of our Techstars program and iTech program. Prior to that, I was working with our Atlanta programs as an investment principal. I was doing sourcing and scouting. And then before that, I was at Founder Gym as the director of programs, where I was teaching underserved founders how to, like, giving them that inside of baseball. But that came from having spent about 3 years at Shadow Ventures as a managing director of their incubator and as a senior associate. And then before that, just working at a bunch of different startups.
Lisa Calhoun: Where is Shadow Ventures?
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: So Shadow Ventures was based here out of Atlanta. They’re a mostly distributed remote team, PropTech early stage, so Seage PropTech, I would say. I think right now they’re all kind of scattered. Like, when I think about it, it was founded in Atlanta. KP Reddy was the GP, is still the GP. KP has since moved to the Bay Area. He has a lot of strong feelings—I’ll let him tell those strong feelings. That’s his story. But he has a lot of strong feelings about the Bay Area, which he’s not wrong. And then I know he also has some folks in Colorado, some folks still here, so they’re just very distributed. But their focus is the built environment, and when I came in, I came in when they were called BuiltTech Labs to kind of help build out their incubator process and test the thesis.
Lisa Calhoun: So why were you so drawn to innovation at the early stages?
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Oh, that’s a good question. I don’t think it’s that I was drawn to innovation. I think I was drawn to entrepreneurship. So, like I tell people, I’m an elder millennial. When I graduated college, it was during the ’08 recession. And I couldn’t find a job, because sometimes you can’t find a job. And so I was very entrepreneurial in building my career. I went to school for merchandising, and I was selling clothes online, like on eBay, which was a thing people did. So I would go to the thrift store and I would buy a whole bunch of stuff—because I went to school for merchandising—make it cute, sell it on eBay. That was like my, my.
Lisa Calhoun: You were like an early ThredUp, right, right.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Well, and it’s funny because that’s how Nasty Gal—it was, that’s how she got her start. And so it was a whole bunch of girls doing this at the time because we fell back on what we knew, right? And so I was doing that. I was freelance writing. I was a stylist. I was working in the mall. I had like 10 jobs all at once to pull together and pay my student loan payments.
Lisa Calhoun: Entrepreneurs are like that, right? They are like jack of all trades, have to hustle, do it all.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Yeah, you have to figure it out. And that’s what I tell people, like even right now when we talk about what’s going on in the economy, you gotta figure it out. Like, I want you—I want to empower young people, entrepreneurs, anybody who’s looking at what’s going on right now and they’re freaking out. Everything is figure-outable. Just go out and do it. You will learn eventually what it is as you go out and try different things.
And so I think that put me in a position where I was always willing to say, “I’m right on top of that rose,” like from Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead. So it was always like, oh, I can figure things out, I can do this. So when opportunities presented themselves, I was like, oh no, this seems cool, I can do this. It was like, hey, you wanna go work in a showroom and you’ll be the person to open the Southeast territory? Sure, everything’s figured out, I can do this, you know.
OK, so from there, hey, we got this tech company that’s based in Norcross, and you’re gonna be selling into Texas. We’ve never sold into Texas—you’re selling computers to Texas. I was like, I can figure it out, you know. And then from there I was like, well, I wanna get back into fashion and focus on sustainability. Sustainability had always been a passion of mine, and a friend connected me with Dana Barrett at the time, who was doing her show, you know, and Dana was like, I got this other friend who you need to meet. Do not move from Atlanta. Do not leave Atlanta. And so I was like, OK.
So I go and I sit down, and it’s Katey, who at the time was the CEO of Soft Health Nation. And so he’s like, I didn’t even know I was getting a job. I literally was just like, oh, this seems cool what they’re doing. I wanna learn more about it. And I just, I was always like, hey, I’m up for a challenge and I can figure it out. And that lends itself to me working with a lot, right? Because you learn so much on the ground floor.
Like I tell people, I’ve always been employee number 1, #2 at companies, because when you come in, you’re hiring me for sales, but I’m not just doing sales. I’m doing sales, I’m doing marketing, I’m doing a little bit of HR because maybe somebody on the team does not know how to go and call a broker and get health insurance, you know. Like, I’m doing ops. Like, when I worked at Shadow Ventures, it was like, hey, we have to do Funbox. And I’m like, I can figure it out, I got Google. I’m very big on like everything is figured out, and I also just like, hey, this seems interesting. This seems like a great opportunity to learn, and I’m just naturally curious.
So, I very rarely did someone put something in front of me as a child and I’m like, oh no, I just absolutely can’t do that.
Lisa Calhoun: Well, all the entrepreneurs listening are like, oh, I want to know more. And you may not know—even if they probably heard the name—but they may not understand what Techstars is, who it is today. Could you share a little bit more for those in the audience that may not know Techstars well, what the program is today?
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Yeah, and so I think when you talk about Techstars, you have to talk about startups, right? Because that is deeply entrenched in what Techstars is and how Techstars is continuing to evolve, right? So yes, it’s an accelerator program, yes, there’s equity, yes, we’re gonna put a bunch of support around you.
What I see that works well with Techstars is I get 10 to 12 entrepreneurs in a room together who are all building at a similar stage, and everybody has the same problems—but how they approach them, you know. So you’ll have someone on a whiteboard trying to figure out their go-to-market strategy, and another founder will walk by and say, oh, I just had this challenge last week, right? And so some of that magic is the community—it’s building that network of other founders around you, but then also bringing in folks like mentors, which are folks like yourself, because you mentor that type of, yeah. And so bringing folks like yourself, who are subject matter experts, who are early-stage operators, who’ve been in there, and who can kind of tell you like, you’re not crazy. I think that’s the first thing I always want to tell founders, like, you are not—you probably are crazy, but not for that reason, right? Like, you’re not crazy, your vision is big and audacious, and I want you to have the right people around you to support you.
So Techstars is a global accelerator platform. They run programs—right now I think they have applications open for a couple of different programs across the country. Techstars Atlanta is interesting because we were originally brought—Techstars was brought to Atlanta by Cox Enterprises.
Lisa Calhoun: Talk about a power move. I so appreciated Cox Enterprises‘ leadership as a private company saying, you know, let’s, let’s build out the ecosystem even further. Let’s also add Techstars to the mix, and such a valuable thing.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Yeah, and I think Cox Enterprises is just an amazing partner overall across the ecosystem.
Lisa Calhoun: Absolutely.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: I have seen the work they’ve done with Engaged, the work they did obviously with Techstars. I’ve seen what they’re doing now with Generator.
Lisa Calhoun: They were our first sponsor at Startup Runway too, which gives away $10K grants to founders who are underrepresented, of color, Hispanic background, female founders. And Cox Enterprises was the first to really see that, and since then, glad to say, joined by many other amazing partners. But Cox Enterprises taking that first step, it’s really bold and great.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Yeah, yeah, and that’s also part of who they are. You’re gonna see a good company, you know, is again, it’s entrepreneurship. I think we always think about innovation and startups as like the tech space, but it really is, it comes down to entrepreneurs, and it comes down to these are people who are first movers, you know, like when you think about like Atlanta’s, I think, biggest success story will always be Coke. That is always like the Atlanta. Coke is Atlanta. When you think about that, like at the time that that was invented, that was groundbreaking, the way in which the whole story about Coke coming back, that was very groundbreaking, the brand in and of itself. That’s entrepreneurship. That’s innovation. Innovation has existed long before computers, right? There’s always been.
Lisa Calhoun: Well, I love Coke, but I don’t want to put any ceilings on the Atlanta. No, I hope the mind. I mean, and maybe you just have to be this way, but I think the best is yet to come. Some of the most exciting companies I’ve seen, I mean, they’re, they’re small like that, but they have a lot of local potential. I really think we have a lot to look forward to.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Oh no, we have a lot, we have a lot of so much interesting stuff which we’ll,
Lisa Calhoun: we can get to that.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: We’re talking about Techstars, we’re talking about Techstars.
Lisa Calhoun: Founders need to know about Techstars. It’s a community, yes, so they will, there’s a lot of peer learning. There’s mentor learning. Tell me about the role of the managing partner, is that the big, the formula.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: So the program that we’re doing, there’s a managing partner. It’s a little bit structured different than a partner program, so we’ve had like Cox Enterprises, so someone like, say, Black & Decker come in as a partner. So this program is for the community, by the community. It will be locally governed and operated, which is, I think.
Lisa Calhoun: But it’s different because it doesn’t have a sponsor, not a set in a direction.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: We get to set the direction for what we think is best for Atlanta, works well for Atlanta. I got a lot of pressure on me coming into that kind of, kind of space.
Lisa Calhoun: Yeah, but that’s a huge opportunity because you know what it is, it is high time that Atlanta said it. When it comes to entrepreneurship and startups, I think that there’s been a history of a sort of profits from here are not, you know, respected in their own community. And so it’s like, well, what are they doing in Silicon Valley? What are they doing in New York? We need a conference like the one they have over there somewhere, and I completely don’t believe that at all. I am long on Atlanta. I believe that we have the founders, the talent, the corporate support, the know-how. I mean, I know we have a lot to prove, but I think the only way we’re going to win is doing it the Atlanta way.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: 100%, and that’s also how I feel about it, right? I don’t think we should look to the Valley and try to emulate. No, we don’t have the same history. We don’t have the same culture, and I think that’s the thing people don’t realize. You can’t replicate what the work has done in Boston.
Lisa Calhoun: We also have such a strong culture here that is, that is an asset, you know. Culture may be the only… What David Cummings has this quote that culture is the only thing that you can’t compete with; it’s the only competitive differentiator also.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Yeah.
Lisa Calhoun: As your code, especially in the age of AI, can… someone else can code it, someone else can sell it, well, someone else may have the idea because a lot of ideas, they’re not unique, you know. But culture is a competitive advantage, and what he says is it’s the only one under the control of the entrepreneur.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Yeah, I love that. I know, I love that because that’s so true, because when you’re building a company, the culture will dictate how far the company could go. A lot of people don’t think about that. If you have a company, that company culture is toxic, you know. But I think Atlanta, when we talk about it, Atlanta’s best and biggest import is usually, you know, at the end of the day. Because there are so many facets of American culture that actually are rooted in Atlanta that I think people don’t think of.
Lisa Calhoun: I think you’re right, you know. It’s really where the rubber meets the road sometimes. I think investors don’t necessarily think of it. You know, venture investing really started on the East Coast. If you look at the history, it made its way very quickly through some of the great families to California, but it never really came back into the South. And so I think a lot of the great investors in our region, and they participate in things like real estate, private equity, and those are very visible here. But venture, it’s sort of an overlooked area. What do you think investors should know about Atlanta?
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: I think they should understand that there’s a lot of opportunity, and I don’t think it’s opportunity in the traditional sense where they’re looking for the next OpenAI. Is there the next OpenAI here? Probably, yes, but I think what they don’t realize is that because of our unique culture, our founders are scrappy. Like I love Atlanta founders because they are different than I’ve seen in some other places. And a lot of that comes out of being, you know, like, “I—and you gotta do what you gotta do—but you have to figure it out,” right? I think the other thing is the talent. I was actually talking to a friend who’s an investor and she’s based out of New Orleans, where I’m from, and she and I were talking, and she said she was out of… abandoned New York, and she kind of got upset because they were talking about the South, and they were talking about the education system in the South, and they were talking about schools in the South and what they do wrong, and she’s like, none of them were from the South. And I was like, yes, because there’s always this…
Lisa Calhoun: There’s a bias against the South.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Right. There is, but you have some top-tier universities.
Lisa Calhoun: Yeah, the facts as an investor, the facts don’t support that bias. I mean, there isn’t a history of returns from early-stage tech startups in the South like there is in some of the other regions, but you have to look at the fundamental analysis. The economy in the South is growing faster than any of the other regions. Now that’s just a fact, and it’s a multi-year, long-term fact. It doesn’t really seem to have an end date in the near future. And if you’ve got a booming economy, that’s what—that’s the rocket fuel entrepreneurs use to launch companies. So I think that’s #1. #2, the South’s rates of entrepreneurship outpace all the other regions, and yes, California may be a gorgeous outlier in the West, but that is not the regional strength. We have that can-do attitude, and the entrepreneurship rates are incredibly high. And then the other thing that is incredibly compelling, is this region, the South, has the lowest unemployment rate of all of the regions.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Yeah.
Lisa Calhoun: So not only is our economy growing faster, it’s employing more people productively. And those fundamentals, you can’t overlook as an investor at any stage, but especially in startups, especially now with AI fueling startup growth and making coding faster, stronger, better, or easier. Entrepreneurs with great ideas can build faster in better economies, full stop. And I think investors have missed that equation, and if I could do one thing, I’d put it together for them and say, look, you’ve got to stop, and you should look South broadly. Need to be in several funds. You have to be diversified. You need to take a big bet on the big growth in this region.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: And I think too, when you talk about the growth in this region, one of the things that kind of helps balance that out is that it’s still relatively affordable.
Lisa Calhoun: Yeah, absolutely.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: So you can be a founder, you can be someone who came out of corporate, and your money can go a little bit longer, and you can be a founder and you can build without having to raise the same amount of capital at the earliest stages as someone in the Bay who has to pay themselves to live in the Bay. You know.
Lisa Calhoun: Absolutely. That actually plays out really well for the investor as well. So we had Peter Walker from Carta who does these amazing graphs — he’s magical. So last year he was our keynote speaker. We’re a Carta Fund at our annual meeting, and I was like, I really pressed him on, please bring some unique data because he’s gonna run some unique queries for us. And one of the things he shared is that in the South, founders raised at a valuation… it is about, you know, this is an average, you know, your mileage may vary — about 50% lower on average than in the West. Number one, that’s not that much. But if you’re an LP, that’s like somebody handing you back 15 cents on every dollar because you invested at a lower valuation at that first round, as long as that can be maintained. And there was not a similar discount on exits. So the exit market is a little more multinational, right? It might not be global, but it’s very multinational, and when you get bidding going on at an M&A moment, there’s a price, and the price can go up, up, up. So it’s interesting — you actually get in potentially at a lower average cost, but that doesn’t come into your discount at the final stage.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: That’s something we’ve been talking about a lot internally in Techstars. We’re talking about making the case for the Southeast. And I was like, you can’t overlook that, you know, from an investor. If you are an LP, you cannot overlook that. And I get it, that, you know, we’re a real estate region. I get it. But you have to diversify your portfolio. I don’t want to have all of my money in real estate. I don’t want to have all my money in anything, you know, and venture, I think, is a great way for you to say, number one, let’s just diversify, but then number two, for you to say, hey, how am I betting back on my community, right?
Lisa Calhoun: You know, what you just said is so important because venture is nascent in our region. I mean, I’m speaking as one of the first fund founders, and I can say that, you know, there have been different tiers of times where a few venture firms have come up and then they’ve pulled back or they ceased investing, people age out, but we have not created a sustainable, scalable venture capital environment across this region yet. So that’s a huge opportunity. I’m crazy excited about it for both of us, but I have to call a spade a spade and say it is early days in the glorious golden age of venture capital in the South.
And so for an LP, what that means is be aware that betting on your community is a part of that bet because there’s a lot of volatility and choppiness in returns in an emerging market, which honestly, I say that all the time — that the South is the safest emerging market because we’ve got all the benefits of being part of the US and all the boom of being an emerging market, you know. But still, you need to kind of embrace that.
And so I think the right investors in this region, they’re greedy. They want to be a part of the boom. They’re interested in early-stage pop, but they’re also like, you know what, this is my community. Yes, and if I can create more wealth here, back a founder that’s here, they don’t have to leave here to get those first checks, that early ventureship, that accelerator experience. If they can stay here, then they can exit here. And the wealth stays in the key, and that’s, to me, also incredibly important and worth doing.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Yeah, and that is one of our really big tenets with Techstars Atlanta — start here, stay here.
Lisa Calhoun: Yeah.
You have a lot of folks who do build their start here and then, if you’re building a startup, you say, OK, I have to move to New York, the market for her. But she’s doing that mainly because she needs to go where the capital is, right? And she needs to expand to where the capital is because we do have…
Lisa Calhoun: We have gaps.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Right.
Lisa Calhoun: B2C early stage. Atlanta is really bad for that. I mean, that’s part of the bumpiness and volatility of not having a growth-stage ecosystem. We’re an early-stage mature ecosystem. We’re nascent.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: And even in the early stage though, you see that there’s gaps on the pre-seed side. I think we’re good at C and maybe, say…
Lisa Calhoun: Not at B2C.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon : Well, no, in general, I think we’re not good at consumer. I’m just — that I think…
Lisa Calhoun: There’s Silicon Road, there’s a break, but it’s not like there’s five choices.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: No, no, no. And I would say this — we’re good at what Atlanta has a legacy, right? So when you think about Atlanta, we have a high density of like your Fortune 500 companies. That would lend itself to having more enterprise. That’s why. That’s because it’s easy for me to say, hey, we got Coke, we got Delta.
Lisa Calhoun: We got customers here.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: We got all the different customers that you could ever want, you know.I think from a consumer standpoint, there is some really interesting stuff that’s happening. Most of it is on the creator economy side. Like I know the folks at Trillist, they’re looking at stuff on the creator economy side. Talked to a couple folks, a lot of those creators, we think about like TikTok and Instagram. A lot of them live here as the job creators, and so you’re seeing more of the nuts and bolts on that side and then more consumer targeting young people who want to join the creator economy.
But outside of that, I think consumer is difficult for us to support in general. It just is what it is. LA does support consumer — and I’m gonna be honest, it has to do with who lives in LA. That’s what that is.
But I say that to say that there still are some gaps on the pre-seed side. So you say like, you know, you have Silicon Road. I love them. I want them to get back to the fundamentals of angel investing, which means that it is inherently risky. And I cannot ask for seed-stage growth from an endangered stage company, from a pre-seed, and that’s all I’m gonna say. That’s all I’m gonna say on that.
Like the number of people I know who hit the angel groups in town and come back to me, and they’re told the growth that they need to be hitting to be entertained by the angel groups — and I’m not gonna say which groups because it’s not important — but there are some groups locally that require a certain amount of like cash in. And that’s more of where you’re investing at, you know, than like where a traditional angel should. Because, you know, angel investing is more, I love the founder, I love the idea, you need to get to customers.
Lisa Calhoun: Oh, I feel that, you know. Everyone writing a check, they write a check on their own, yes, whatever that is, whatever that is. And so what I will say is I’ve been very excited by this last couple of years because of AI and how quickly you can get to an MVP, yes, without capital.
So for those very early individual investors and angels out there who are starting to require a certain level — obviously it’s up to them and their internal thesis and not what that level is — but Ballard has also raised not revenue as a number, but growth. We want to see substantial month-over-month growth, and substantial does mean double, if not triple digits, month-over-month. Now there’s no base that we have in our mind like, oh, you don’t have MRR, don’t talk to us. No, there’s no number there. Actually, there is no number there. Talk to us before you have revenue — that’s great.
But once you start making revenue and start learning, it kind of starts feeling that this is who you want to be as a software company. That growth is more possible now because AI can code a little bit faster. So yes, we’re in B2B and different markets, but I do think it’s far ahead for founders today than 10 years ago in terms of their capital needs relative to their revenue performance.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: So I agree with that, but what I’m saying is that when we talk about like the pre-seed stage, yes, you need to have growth. And I think to your point, there is no… it’s this percent, because it’s gonna look different for every company, right? Showing me that you have momentum, showing me that you have traction, I think that’s gonna be different for every company, right? But I also think that if I’m expecting a company who has an MVP to have a certain threshold of revenue as an angel, I’m using that as… I’m using revenue, which again, but as an early-stage company, you and I also know that you can have growth, you can have revenue, and something can happen and the company still could be.
Lisa Calhoun: Absolutely.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: So it’s hedging your bet a little bit, you know, but that’s where you see that gap again because it goes back to the gaps in the market. That’s part of where you’re seeing that.
Lisa Calhoun: My meeting just before ours was with a Series A, and they were talking about how, and when we were both discussing that, there are a lot of high-revenue early-stage companies that we still believe will fail because they’re building a tool — AI — that in a couple of years, people realize they can write their own, so they don’t need to pay $10 a month for that, you know.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: I can do it myself, yeah.
Lisa Calhoun: Might as well, and it’ll work better for you, you know.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: It’s also—so are you building a product in a company, or are you just building a feature that’s an add-on? If it, right, right.
Lisa Calhoun: There are a lot of companies now that are feeling the pain of AI eroding what they thought was a cash cow. Yeah, but yeah, it’s interesting times to be an investor. It’s exciting.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: No, no, no, it’s exciting. And I think some of that volatility is part of what makes it really… I mean, you know, some of that… like, it’s exciting because it’s so dynamic. It also gives you an opportunity to kind of see different markets and learn. Like I tell people all the time: I’m learning something new every day when I’m talking to a founder. I’m learning something new every day when I’m talking to other investors because I love listening to you and hearing your perspective on things. It’s also giving me thoughts like, when I get home, I need to look this up, I need to dig into this, like some of this data.
Lisa Calhoun: It’s one of the joys of being in a developing ecosystem—our community is getting so rich, it’s getting so diverse and full of perspectives. Every time I get together with the growing group of Atlanta investors, there’s actually stories to share. It used to be 10 years ago, five investors in town—they had one story, they all knew it, you know, whatever—it seems like they were on one chat, and that’s not healthy. Now, there are enough investors. I mean, I think Atlanta may be the GOAT of female managing partners. For example, per capita, we have so many funds run by women. So there are a lot of interesting conversations even among the growing investor community here.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Yeah, and I tell people that’s one of the things that if you’re a founder and you’re looking for a home, right, I think that’s one of the things that makes Atlanta unique, you know. I was at AWS and did a boot camp last week. It was underserved capitals, and they were from all over the country. I was very surprised because they were doing New York, Atlanta—I think they were also doing one other US South stop—and then some stops in Europe. And we had folks from the Bay Area coming in, and they were so excited to be in a room where they felt seen, they felt heard, they felt safe. And they have that same reaction when they meet with investors, right? We have a higher concentration of female managing business, you know. So like I mentioned earlier about the creators—some of my favorite creators, I end up finding out they live in Atlanta, and you’re like, “Oh, did you see that in the background?” You know, “Oh, that’s Atlanta.” And I think those are things that we’re leading—so many conversations that people don’t realize. It all started, it’s starting in Atlanta, and then it’s spreading out. What is it? Atlanta influences everything—that’s the thing. I would say, yeah, there’s a lot of truth to that, and that is why founders are attracted to Atlanta, because I talk to founders all the time who want to move here.
Lisa Calhoun: Oh, another step. I was talking about the three big steps earlier. There is a fourth: the South is attracting more people moving in than any other region. It is a net importation of the rest of the US. No matter what, that has been a multi-year trend. There have always been people who tend to leave, yes, that’s normal, but the net-net is that this region has the greatest in about. It’s because of the lifestyle, it’s because of the culture, because of a lot of things, cost of living that you brought up, but this is a destination.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Yes. I think the other thing—so we were, I was doing some research on Brain Trees. Everybody talks about the Georgia Tech kids who leave town or the UGA kids. That’s actually changing.
Lisa Calhoun: Oh, absolutely, that’s changing. Say it more.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: So more of the student population in the Southeast, they’re staying in the Southeast. Now, are they maybe leaving Atlanta and going to Charlotte? Maybe going to Tennessee, Miami, but they’re staying in the region because, to your point, there are more companies coming.
Lisa Calhoun: The big teams are here. The culture is vibrant and, hey, it’s worth staying.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: I think the big thing is the weather. Like, that’s another thing I always tell people: I’m spoiled here. I could not do winter in New York.
Lisa Calhoun: You know what, kind of funny, it’s like we all lived together through the COVID experience, and it’s such a blessing that we’ve moved on. But what I have to say, I mean, it’s great to see America being healthy. I mean, that was a yeah, but the Northeast and the students there had such a different experience, students in the South, and it was very public. It was very obvious, and I think that that really settled into the Gestalt mind as, OK, when bad things hit, the South is going to be a little freer environment than some other group.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Yeah, of course. Yeah, and it’s, I think it really comes down to, like I said, it’s the weather at the end of the day. Like I worked in the fashion industry, and I would tell people I hated going to New York in January.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon:I know a lot of folks who come from New York and they love the weather here, and that’s just anecdotal, but I think it really comes down to—you can build a life here, you know, and you can build a life here that is meaningful, and you can build a life here that feels good for you and your family, and you want to bring in your talent. That, you know, so I think that’s the other thing—you want to have a company somewhere where people want to live, where people want to grow, where they can grow or they can expand.
Lisa Calhoun: So what do you foresee for the evolution of venture startup communities over the next year or so? We’re going into a big year. In your relatively new role as managing partner at Techstars Atlanta, what is the future you’re trying to bring about? What are the threads you’re pulling on and getting excited about?
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: So I think it’s all the things that we kind of discuss, you know, as we’ve gone about it—it’s pulling on that thread of the talent, the talent that wants to stay here and wants to build, whether that is getting a grad from Spelman College to come in and run your marketing at your startup or getting someone from Morehouse College because I’ve met some really sharp entrepreneurs from there.
Lisa Calhoun: And they have a great private program.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Yeah, oh, that’s a whole different conversation because I tell people—I’m in a group chat with the folks who are in BC here, and I’m like, yeah, a lot of them went to Morehouse College, the HBCUs are very well represented, so don’t ever, ever, ever sleep on an HBCU grad. Like, Kamala Harris went to an HBCU for a reason. She got to where she got and she did great. But I think when we talk about it with the talent, right? It is—how do we take what we do really well in the town to bring them together?
How do we take them to do really well from corporates, because you mentioned Cox Enterprises and the innovation that they’ve done? You have so many corporate leaders in Atlanta who are really doubling down on the city, you know, entrepreneurship in the city and on innovation in the city, and they want to be a part of this, and they want to be a part of that charge. We’re gonna bring them in. You know, you have investors, and I tell folks we need to do such a better job of sharing deal flow with each other. And so I’m gonna make that easier with some of the stuff that we’re gonna put together with Techstars because I want you to know that, hey, we got free seats and stage companies that will be coming out of this program. That could be a funnel for so many of the funds in town, you know, where you don’t have to go out and say, “I gotta do the FOMO deal from the Bay.” You can still do it. But you don’t have to say, “I have to go searching for a great deal flow.”
We’re gonna work with not just our program, but I want to collaborate with some of the other programs in town so that we can make sure we’re showcasing all of our companies. And the fact that we did something like that in Alabama, when I was there, it was amazing. It was such a good turnout, good vibe, really excited the ecosystem and got the investors. We had a ton of investors from Atlanta out too.
You know, so we’re gonna be pulling all of those things, but then also when we talk about the LP perspective, the Southeast is a great place to be invested. You should be looking at several different funds at several different stages across the region, whether they are industry-specific or agnostic, whatever floats your boat. You should be looking at the different funds around this region, whether you’re local to here or not, right? And so we’re pulling all of that together because we understand Atlanta’s superpower is that collaboration. We understand the superpower here is folks like yourself who have been in the game and who understand it and know it inside and out, and you come and talk to the founder and lay it out for them and say—and be honest.
Lisa Calhoun: I get high points on being honest.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Let me say this—you’re being, that’s the—being humble, you know what you’re doing, and you’re very honest, and I think we need more of that. We need more of that directness in talking to our founders and telling them how to get prepared for investment, right? Because I think that’s another gap that is in the market.
Lisa Calhoun: If they want to take VC or not, you know, and I think that’s always a conversation worth having with founders in the early stages because VC is a very specific flavor of capital, as you would. It comes with a lot of conditions and expectations; it may not be aligned with the founder’s dreams. You can build a great company without VC—even in tech—and it’s done all the time. And so I think it’s really important. There’s an almost spiritual match between certain founders and venture capital. They want that. They want that specific type of partnership. A piece of their table is enlarged by having that kind of presence, drive, and momentum, and for some founders, it’s really not that. And so that’s critical in early-stage programs—to spend some time with that and get some experiences from other founders who had successful exits with VC, without VC, different experiences.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: So you said it, so I don’t have to say it this week on LinkedIn. Because that is like my weekly announcement: to your point, venture is not a fit for every founder. It’s not a fit based on what your vision is, who you are, how you’re trying to grow your business—and that’s OK. That doesn’t make you less.
Lisa Calhoun: Absolutely.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: It doesn’t mean—I think we’ve made VC very sexy, and it’s like—
Lisa Calhoun: VC has spent some money as an—You know, two points about LA and California. I feel that they spend a lot of money, yes, and VC is very sexy, mostly to attract capital, honestly. That needs to be understood. VC is, in a way, a cottage industry and always will be. There are maybe almost 1,000 active firms now; almost 40% of VC firms shut down in the last couple of years. And so very few firms—and when you think about the average VC, you know, they’re not NEA, which is one of the large, amazing ones, or KKR. They’re small, they’re boutique, they’re 5 to 10 people. They’re Valor-sized. There are VCs, of course, smaller than Valor. So when you look at that type of an industry, it has to do something to differentiate itself. But VC is, I mean—it shouldn’t be the sex appeal on your cap table. It should be hardworking dollars that have a goal for you that you will understand, and also you have chemistry with their culture because they will be on your cap table as long as you’re CBL. So there’s that. Yeah, yeah.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: I think that’s the thing that I always thought—that when you go into meetings with investors, it’s not just about the capital. It’s about making sure this is a match and this is the right fit for you, and making sure that the investors on that team are the right fit for you, particularly at the early stages when investors tend to be a lot more hands-on and there’s a lot more support.
Lisa Calhoun: Well, it’s interesting—they should be. I mean, I will add, as our newly developing ecosystem, we do still have a lot of earlier-stage investors who are fairly hands-off. Those I truly think of as angels because they’re just trying to put some capital in, and they’re hoping it goes well. And for some founders, that’s also perfect because they don’t want any, per se, control. But the level of daily, weekly, monthly cadences that your investor believes will help you thrive—that’s a great conversation for every founder to have with their major early-stage investors.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: And I think that’s one of those things—as you’re having that conversation, letting them know is where you should start, because I want to make sure that founders know that’s part of the conversation when you’re getting to know the investor. Not just after they’ve cut the check, but we want to make sure that we get to know this investor, know their process, and understand how they work with founders that are in their portfolio. Because, again, I love that you said it’s like the spiritual match, and that’s really what it is. It really is—you have to understand that the vibes are aligned between you and these early-stage funds that you’re looking at. And I think a lot of founders, when they get to a point in times of desperation, they just only take money.
Lisa Calhoun: And there’s investors for that as well, and they come with 2x and 3x preferred. To your point, it’s one of the reasons why I’ve made such a—I’ve tried to make a big deal out of Valor, marketing the fact that not only is our name Valor, but we call ourselves the ‘Community of Courage’. That started to define us, because our culture and our values are aligned with that courage and jumping in and taking a risk with the founder. Side by side, we’ve taken a risk, you’re taking a risk—we’re taking a risk together. How do we be successful together? Courage underscores a lot of how we invest and how we look at that future opportunity together. And for some founders, that’s already too aggressive, right? Yeah, and we are aggressive.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Yeah, that is not for everybody. I always tell people—you can be the juiciest steak, and you will always have vegetarians that exist. And so you have to understand that it’s about a match. It’s not just about seeking funding; it’s about making sure that we are aligned.
Lisa Calhoun: Absolutely.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: On the vision, because again, most relationships with your investors last longer than the average marriages.
Lisa Calhoun: It’s so true.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: It’s sad.
Lisa Calhoun: It’s just harder to get at. It’s harder than the other way, yeah.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: I know, I know. But when you put it into that perspective, you understand that you are looking for someone. And you’re looking for a firm who’s a match for you and for your business and where you want to go. There have been so many stories more recently about founders who have raised venture and then had to shut down their business because they took money, maybe from investors who started pressuring them to do things that were not aligned with their vision for their business. And it’s like, that’s why at the beginning stages of this conversation, you want to understand how this person thinks, what value they can provide, all of the different things as you’re going through those conversations. And I would say, when you’re an LP, you also want to do the same kind of things. You want to make sure that there is alignment with what you value, because again, so you—you were saying earlier, it’s about community, right? If you’re an LP, you’re investing in the Southeast, you’re investing in building a community.
Lisa Calhoun: And what is the culture of the—
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Yeah, and what—what are you—what is your vision, and how does your vision for that community line up with that fund bait?
Lisa Calhoun: Yeah, there’s a lot of LPs that would probably say they don’t necessarily—you know, they’re doing diligence in a very financial, technical way, and yet they haven’t thought of it in the way it was framed. But that’s an opportunity too. I mean, if you haven’t, that’s because you might be thinking the markets are saturated, the cultures are done, and, you know, this is the menu. But in Atlanta and in the South, we’re still chefs in the kitchen building that experience. And so I always say: LPs that want to write checks in this community, you’re welcome into the kitchen. What do you want on the menu? What kind of flavors are appealing to your entity? Because we’re still at that stage, and it may be honestly the last place in the United States where there is a booming economy and the opportunity to scale a venture culture. I mean, yes, there are places that don’t have venture. Some of those places will never have venture. They don’t have booming economies. They don’t have the infrastructure at the business level to create generational wealth. But this region does, and it’s still being created by the people who care about it, which I can’t wait to see what happens with Techstars in the coming year. I’m really glad you sat down to give a little preview of how you’re thinking about it in your new role.
Is there anything I should have asked you?
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Oh, I love when people ask that question because then I have to kind of rewind the whole conversation. I think—we talked about what founders needed to know, and I feel like we jumped into some other conversations, we meandered, but it happens. I think the most important thing I want founders to know about Techstars Atlanta is what we are building: we are building a solution for founders. Founders are the people that we are building for. Yes, we have other stakeholders obviously, but at the end of the day, this is about giving founders the best possible experience and giving them the best leg up when it comes to going out into the market post-program.
So it’s really, “come to me when you’re a little bit early, but I still want to track you.” I always tell people: the founders that I get who have been the best performing from the Techstars programs have been founders who have been bugging me and on my calendar. I’m meeting with them every month, and I have no idea why they’re on my calendar, but they want to talk through things around customer discovery that they’ve learned. They want to keep me up to date on their business. They want to get my thoughts on things. Eventually, you see how they use all of the insights they’re gathering to iterate over time, and you’re like, “OK, this is the line of all the different thoughts of our meetings.”
You need to be in a program. And if it’s not mine, I got you somewhere else. You need to be an invest, and I can say, “Hey, let me tell you about my friends who are doing later-stage investments.” It’s easy for me to refer you for deals, because you have done the work and you’ve shown the consistency. So I think for founders, it’s really all about the hustle and reaching out and getting on my radar now.
Lisa Calhoun: How do founders get on your radar now, Anastasia, since you mentioned it?
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: LinkedIn. So, OK. I always tell people: find me on LinkedIn. The thing you need to know is that my picture will always be different—different hair—because I change my hair. It’s fun. I can do that. Anastasia Nicole Simon on LinkedIn. I don’t know what the picture is this week, but every time you see my headshot, it’s different hair.
Lisa Calhoun: So is there a Techstars Atlanta site they can go to?
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Techstars Atlanta is also on LinkedIn, so you can go there and we will post different things. I also post quite frequently on LinkedIn.
Lisa Calhoun: Great. So grab some office hour time.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: 15 minutes. I’m very efficient in 15 minutes.
Lisa Calhoun: Now some people feel like, do you want them to reach out via message or connection request? People have different vibes about that.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Connection requests.
Lisa Calhoun: That’s important because you have some polite founder writing you a message you’d never see. Just reach out and connect. Tell her, tell her, “I’m a founder. I’m interested in what you’re doing.”
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: And again, I usually post once a week a reminder about office hours. That is a free slot on my calendar. I do them every Friday. You get 15 minutes. We will go over one question. I always tell people I’m very, like, oddly specific on the one question. Do not ask me to go over your whole go-to-market strategy. That’s not—it’s seriously not. That’s a 90-minute session. We’ve got 15 minutes. You tell me what’s your one burning question—whether it’s something about Techstars, VC, or feedback on your pitch. I can do pitch feedback. I can also give feedback on your go-to-market strategy, but be prepared to present it.
Lisa Calhoun: 15 minutes.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: I did it in 5 minutes, and then the rest of the 10, we’re gonna dissect it.
Lisa Calhoun: Do you have favorite books for founders? Like, the books you really like?
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: So Venture Deals—I always tell founders to read that.
Lisa Calhoun: I guess that’s one you have to say, right?
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Yeah, every time. I actually love it because I tell people: I didn’t come from a traditional finance background. Venture Deals and Secrets of Sand Hill Road gave me a really good understanding of VC as I was working and learning because it’s mostly an apprenticeship business.
The thing I love about Secrets of Sand Hill Road is that he changes out his pronouns, so you know there are female CEOs, female investors, and I didn’t even realize it until I listened to the audiobook. He was like, “the CEO, she…” and I was like, what? She’s the CEO? That’s wild. I’d never seen that before. And so I always tell female founders—it feels good to have a man who’s been in the industry for years write a book and acknowledge that you exist.
Those two are really good.
The Mom Test—I always tell people to read that one. It’s a very good book for customer discovery and getting critical feedback. I don’t know whose mom they are talking about—it’s not my mom—but the premise is that it’s hard to get your mom to give critical feedback. This book shows you how to structure questions. It’s immensely helpful for early-stage founders.
Another one is KP Reddy’s book Everything You Know About Startups Is Wrong. I just love that because he goes into his unique experience and tells you the truth about building a business and how sometimes your life can fall apart if you’re not prioritizing correctly. What prioritizing correctly means is different for everyone, but he has really great stories and life lessons.
I also tell people to read fiction. Fiction builds empathy. I always tell you: read the business books, the lean startup books, all those different things, but also read fiction. It helps you build empathy and refine your perspective on the world. I read a ton of fiction.
The last book my fiancé and I read together—we read at different paces; I read very fast, then stop randomly for 3 or 4 days, whereas he reads consistently—was about a Native American vampire.
Lisa Calhoun: OK, and like, the wild was the most insane.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: It was called—what was it—the Buffalo Hunter Hunter. And so it’s about, like, this early…
Lisa Calhoun: It gets you right out of your everyday, and it was just…
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: One of our friends, her husband was talking about it, and I was like, I love it. I’m a spooky horror kind of vibe, so it’s like vampires, OK. And then he’s like, yeah, it’s this guy who’s indigenous and he’s a vampire, and I was like, sold. So we immediately go and get the book. And as we’re reading, I’m like, this is wild, but it’s a great break from reality again—stuff like that.
Lisa Calhoun: Absolutely. You are an escapist reader, 100%.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: You need it instead of binging Netflix.
Lisa Calhoun: Well, there’s not enough Netflix in the world.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Yeah, it’s a whole different…
Lisa Calhoun: Actually, that stuff about when you go to sleep, if you’re watching TV or Instagram or whatever you’re doing, it can keep you up—I believe that. I don’t know that it’s scientifically true, but since I believe it, I do tend to read before bed every night. I’ll have about 30–45 minutes where I’m just reading. I definitely have a business book open, and I might choose that depending on my mood, or I have a fiction book, or I read the news—but the news can get me down, so then I go back to some fiction. Anyway, it was actually a great conversation.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Who knew it would end with vampire hunters, you know? There you go.
Lisa Calhoun: On the podcast, because they’ll be like, “I read that Buffalo Hunter Hunter.”
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: You’re gonna be like, wait—that is the wildest thing. It’s either that, or they’re gonna tell me when I talk to people about anime, because I’m really into anime, and I’m like, I don’t know who’s an anime fan because I have an anime tattoo, and they could see it and call it out. So yeah, I know you’ve watched the podcast and got to the end—if you see me, ask me about my anime tattoo.
Lisa Calhoun: So we’ll talk about life, food, and other interesting things in the anime-AI world. Next conversation. Yes, I’m glad you could come.
Anastasia (Nicole) Simon: Thank you. No, thank you for having me. This was a joy and a pleasure.
Lisa Calhoun: Awesome.
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