Lisa Calhoun
Welcome back to the Atlanta Startup Podcast. This is Lisa Calhoun, I’m your host today and founding managing partner at Valor Ventures. As a lot of you have already heard, Greenwood just acquired The Gathering Spot. And today we’re in for a special treat. CEO and Founder, Ryan Wilson of The Gathering Spot is on with us today to share all the details about that acquisition. You’ll also get a chance to hear from Ryan on things he’s learned as a founder and how he would advise other founders on things you care about too, like fundraising in Atlanta. So this is a great conversation it’s really worth listening to. Ryan is a leader in this community whose impact only continues to grow. So sit back, enjoy, and get a chance to get to know Ryan Wilson of The Gathering Spot. I’m so excited to chat with you today, Ryan. Thank you for taking some time. I know it’s always busy and this week? Incredible.
Ryan Wilson
I’m glad to be here. I appreciate the opportunity.
Lisa Calhoun
A lot of people are curious about this amazing iconic exit of The Gathering Spot to Greenwood. Before we get into that, I don’t think enough people realize the full story of The Gathering Spot. If you don’t mind, I’d like to rewind it a little bit back to the beginning, before we met, when you and TK were dreaming about what you wanted to build, and share some of that, because I think that arc just ties so beautifully into what you’re doing today.
Ryan Wilson
Well, I appreciate the question. I think a lot of times folks think that businesses come about overnight. My joke has been that it’s been at night, but certainly not overnight. We started the process in 2013. I went to Georgetown for undergrad and that’s where I met TK, my co-founder. The goal at that point was definitely not to start a business. I wanted to be an attorney, he wanted to go work on Wall Street, and so that was the path that we pursued. Fast forward a little bit. I went to law school, I stayed at Georgetown and TK was working in the city. We got the idea after a lot of things were happening in our lives, but one of the galvanizing moments is I got an email from some friends after George Zimmerman was acquitted of Trayvon Martin’s murder. The question in the email was, what are we going to do? And I responded back to them with the idea of building a community where we could have that conversation, really realizing that after college, we really had lost a lot of things that were special about that experience. Access to space, people, thought leaders, coming regularly to what felt like our front door, and ultimately, again, a place to be able to have meaningful conversations. That started the journey we were working on for a number of years as I finished up my law degree in 2016.
Lisa Calhoun
What I’m hearing is business as activism, which is a pretty unusual choice. Would you agree with that?
Ryan Wilson
It is. I mean, I still think that on a fundamental level, every business is trying to solve a problem. The problem that we were trying to solve was really realizing that there were a lot of people that really felt disconnected from one another, immediately after the college context, where you have a ton of connection. What we were trying to solve is, what community can we build to help to try to fill in that gap, realizing there’s research even to this that this is the loneliest time period in human existence, we’re more connected than ever, right? But research is telling us that we are more lonely than we have ever been. What we were tapping into was trying to solve, what I see still is a very large problem. How do you get to know people better?
Lisa Calhoun
A lot of people are watching things like that series on TV which is kind of popularizing that WeWork story for a lot of folks. The Gathering Spot has always been fundamentally different from WeWork. I should know, I work all over the country in co-working spaces. But for people who maybe haven’t experienced The Gathering Spot, what was it about your and TK’S vision in those early days that made something really differentiate it?
Ryan Wilson
For us, even going back to those first conversations and emails, the work was really never about space, right? We’ve always seen space as a tool to facilitate connections, but the business will be centered around people, and that’s what you can expect at TGS. Sure, we have an events space, a restaurant and bar space, and a workspace. But the thing that we’re trying to do every single day is to figure out a context for folks to know one another better. Really seeing that events and dining and work are the tools to help to facilitate those connections, not actually the product of the business itself. It’s been interesting for us as a company, we have seen companies come and go since we started. All in all, a lot of times those comparisons, as you referenced, weren’t always the best fit because they were trying to solve a different problem than we had ever been.
Lisa Calhoun
I also really loved the way, especially even before it existed in real life, the way you verbalized to me some of those earlier days at The Gathering Spot. Your vision for technology and how technology could support a connection in new and meaningful ways. I found that very inspiring. I still do. I don’t think technology has been ployed properly yet to create the kind of connectivity that it could. I wondered what have you learned about that? You’re going through the pandemic, I feel like one of the things that are really differentiated about your vision for the community is the way you look at the tech layer. What do you think about that? What do you think about that now?
Ryan Wilson
I think technology is a powerful tool to facilitate relationships and to have folks participate in experiences. Far too often, I think that those experiences sometimes are a little bit shallow, right? We think that we’re doing more work online than what we actually are doing. I joke all the time, folks will say, “Well, you know, I sent you a connection on this platform or that platform.” But that really isn’t that isn’t relationship building, right? The way that we think about technology is, how do you build tools or have tools available to the membership that help to facilitate relationship-building to the extent that we are able to have technology that helps us do that, then that helps the business overall. But then also, we’ve seen paid dividends, just in terms of the way that folks are able to connect to business partners and then also just their friends?
Lisa Calhoun
Well, The Gathering Spot is definitely a complex business. Lots of moving parts so I’d love to have you reflect at this moment in time, we will never be at this moment in time again, where you’re fresh off your exit to Greenwood. I’m sure a lot in your mind, you’re a very thoughtful person, what would you say are some of the lessons learned as a founder at this point in your journey?
Ryan Wilson
I think there are a lot, we’ve been here for a long time. I think one of the things as a founder that I had to embrace early was that you have to learn and recover from mistakes super, super quickly. It feels odd to put that in the lessons learned category. But for me, it really was one. You got to continue to keep your feet moving, continue to ideate, and know that while whatever it is that you’re doing may not be working as well as you thought it would, you can get to another place. I have made more mistakes in business than honestly, I can recall at this point. It’s been many. But I think the place that I almost got stopped was believing that we’re never going to be able to get this thing started in the first place. I think a lot of founders lose the game before it honestly even gets started. I try to encourage folks, when you’re in those early days, to remember why you started in the first place, know that there’s a reason for that, and continue to fight for the biggest possible vision for the business. Whatever that is, continue to fight for that vision and that version of the company, because it’s possible.
Lisa Calhoun
That recovery game is important. To your point, I think that a lot of people think they hear Silicon Valley, move fast and break things. What they don’t realize is you’re gonna break things anyway, you might as well do it quickly. As long as you’re breaking stuff, do it quickly, move on, and learn from that. How do you recover from a mistake? What is your go-to? What was your headset? Do you do anything? How do you do it?
Ryan Wilson
I tried to stay grounded. The reason why I started in the first place and realized that that reason wasn’t completely ridiculous, right? There’s a reason why I am wherever I am. I grew up playing golf and one of the things that you learn on the golf course is that if you pay attention to the last shot that you hit, the next shot is probably going to be pretty awful, too. The best golfers in the world just take the ball where it is and figure out how to get it into the hole. I try to approach work in that same way. I may have hit a bad shot, I may be in the far rough in the trees, and don’t know how I’m ever going to get back to the hole, but if I continue to focus on that bad tee shot, I’m probably going to have a series of other shots that have put me even further behind. I don’t stay very long with the mistake and I try to reframe it. It just kind of is what it is. We’ve got to figure out a way out of it anyway, I might as well do that with some energy and optimism.
Lisa Calhoun
Don’t catastrophize it, don’t make it worse than it is. I mean, you can make it worse. That leads me to think about one of the hardest things that the founders with big dreams like you face, and that is fundraising. I would even say fundraising in the south is yet another level of tough. What are some lessons learned that you would share with us? Particularly founders, I want founders to hear this and to hear some truths from you.
Ryan Wilson
The beginning foundation, where you start really, really matters, right? Those first fundamental decisions about how you’re going to think about capital in the business, in the long run, matter, right? Because they end up playing into future decisions and sometimes could even be the thing where future capital is not attracted to the business, because of a thing that you did four or five years ago, in different circumstances.
Lisa Calhoun
Can you ground that for us and even give us an example? Because you’re absolutely right.
Ryan Wilson
This is something that I see often. It kind of applied to us, but not as bad as what I’ve seen in other cases. Folks taking very small checks and having many people on their cap table for many, many different valuations and ways of engagement in the business, you find yourself in a Series A trying to explain why two or three years ago, your cousin or a family friend or that other person that you met at one time, own 20% of the business don’t really have anything meaningful that they’re contributing to it at the moment and did it at a valuation that, again, doesn’t set you up to have a strong conversation about the business. Crowded cap tables, having cap tables with, again, people on them that are not helpful to the business. These are all things that you’ve got to think about, where are you trying to land eventually, and be very disciplined in the early days at staying flexible, but true to a thesis about the way that the business is going to be capitalized. I started the journey when I was 23/24. While I had great guidance around me, I can’t say that I was thinking completely about what does the business look like after two, five, and 10 years of us building clubs or whatever we’re doing digitally? How are we going to actually continue to feel this thing moving forward? I got there, but I could have gotten there faster.
Lisa Calhoun
How has your thinking changed about how much help an investor can give a business? How would you advise a founder in other words, when you first started raising money, you probably thought investors are good for the money and maybe they’re good for this and that. Now, from this perspective, a few years down the road and past your exit, you’ve probably sharpened how you think about investors adding value. What have you learned?
Ryan Wilson
An investor’s a key partner. I think that that’s the way they need to be viewed in the business, as a partner, someone or a group of people that will be there with you through ups and downs, but really, that they’re not going anywhere. I think sometimes folks talk about investors like it’s a temporary situation. We met, and I was able to raise some capital, but what they don’t think about is that those same folks are now tied to whatever happens with the business, good or bad, for the entire lifecycle of the company, right? You’ve got to be strategic. Who are those folks? What are they able to contribute to the business, knowing that they’re not going to work day-to-day on the business like you are, but there’s going to be specific moments where their advice, their relationships, hopefully, there’s something that is helpful to you and to the company. If you’re not able to answer that question, if there’s not something strategic about why the capital is coming into the business, you should think if it’s a good fit because again, they’re not going anywhere.
Lisa Calhoun
It’s definitely been an active conversation. This is a great time for me to tell you again, thank you so much for the honor of Valor being on your cap table. Honestly, it’s a huge honor to partner with you. Your and TK’s vision was inspiring from the moment I met it. I was really excited that we had the opportunity to go down that road together.
Ryan Wilson
For everyone watching, we’re not done yet. But they’ll see that as the conclusion but no. I mean, thank you. It’s a humbling thing as an entrepreneur. As you are raising capital, whether you’re raising from friends and family or from professional investors, you are really then charged with being a good steward of that investment. There’s a goal there to return that capital plus some to the investors at some point, hopefully soon. I think sometimes people talk about investors like it’s grant money, it’s not, right? It’s actually far, far from it in many ways. But for your work, Lisa, I think that when it’s all said and done this is going to be a really exciting chapter in Atlanta’s history just to focus there for a second. But part of the reason why it’s going to be exciting is that there were people like you that said, “Hey, I’m going to think differently about the way that capital is going to find itself at work in our city and beyond at this point.” That’s meaningful. Yes, thank you for your participation with TGS.
Lisa Calhoun
I can’t wait to talk about Greenwood because there’s so much going on there. Before we get off the subject of fundraising, how has Valor been most helpful to you? How do you think about that now looking back on this journey and then let’s talk about the next chapter?
Ryan Wilson
I spent a lot of time in this conversation talking about relationships so I’m gonna stick there. The easy answer to any question about a relationship with an investor is capital, right? But, again, in this relationship piece, it is important to have people that you can have conversations with that help you to think differently about the business. In our case, our conversations, particularly as the business was growing from a digital perspective, looking at our technology, we had a very high retention rate of the community through COVID. The reason why, though, is that we were prepared from a tech perspective and folks were accustomed to engaging with our content digitally that when COVID hit, we didn’t find ourselves, like many folks having to try to build something, we already had it there. Now, we made it better over time, but we had the core of what needed to exist there. and that goes back to meaningful conversations that I was having with you about the best ways to think about how we were going to connect digitally. That’s one thing I can highlight relationships in the business matter and how people help you to think about the business.
Lisa Calhoun
Well, you’re such a learner. I mean, you’re just a sponge. If it can make the business better, I think you were engaged in 100 conversations every week about making the business better from all kinds of sources. Sometimes I was there on The Gathering Spot watching that happen live, I’m looking at these sponges of business growth. Indeed, you had an exit a lot sooner than I think people are anticipating and it does start such an exciting chapter. Tell us more about Greenwood and The Gathering Spot and what you see in the future.
Ryan Wilson
I’ll answer that question and talk a little bit about how we got there. At TGS, again, I’ve talked a lot about our programs and the conversations that happened in the club. In short, many of those conversations came back to the capital, it’s what we were talking about earlier, right? It’s important for us to try to talk about the resources necessary. A lot of times, a big percentage of the members of the community at TGS are entrepreneurs. What is it like for us to think differently about the ways that we can help those business owners and individuals overall have access to the financial services that we’ve been talking about for a really long time? The best of what we do is in community building, the best of what they do is in providing those financial services to folks. Together, we’re able to create a platform that does both, that helps to better serve the community that we know and love. What you can expect moving forward or more products from a financial services perspective, more gathering spots from a TGS perspective, and to gather more benefits for being tied to the two. I will continue as a combined group to enhance the community’s experience by having more things that we’re able to accomplish together.
Lisa Calhoun
That sounds amazing. I was noticing in some of the materials, of course, there’s been a lot of incredible articles coming; Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg. places like that. Together you have already a population of 1 million affiliates already around the network. How do you see that growing and going in the future? What are some of the things that, as your new Head of Community, tell us about how you’re seeing that future of community maybe the next five years or twelve months?
Ryan Wilson
I’m honored because a lot of times we’re even talking about what’s tied to the growth of the community. They’re old pretty quickly. The community continues to grow and I’m really excited and thankful about that. We’re going to continue to grow, though. This is really far from the end, but really the starting point, what you realize when you get to meaningful scale, so we’re talking about folks in the millions instead of the thousands. What that does is it opens up a ton of new doors for new relationships, and again, new products and services that we’ll be able to offer the community. We’ll continue on that quest, again, the easy answer here is we’re going to build more gathering spots and do more by connecting the network online. But then there are also some other tools on the finance side.
Lisa Calhoun
I had the opportunity to go down to one of my banking relationships and their physical location, I’m not going to mention the brand, but that’s one of the big ones. I mean, almost everyone has an account, walked into their location because I needed a special signature. They can’t help it but it’s just dead. There’s a little line of folks and I was thinking about the energy over The Gathering Spot when I was there earlier this week. It’s so vibrant. And I was like, wow, this could well be the future of finance, is to actually have a network that not just empowers your business financially, but empowers it with the relationships you need to take it to the next level of talent recruitment resources. Really exciting thing.
Ryan Wilson
It’s an exciting time. We’re working day in and day out, yes to disrupt the ways that people think about where and how they’re supposed to engage with the financial institutions that they use on a regular basis.
Lisa Calhoun
If you had an ask, what would it be?
Ryan Wilson
It would be to join the community. Formally, you can join The Gathering Spot community, we exist at this point across the country. I would certainly encourage you to join the Greenwood community, at this point that is the same thing. But there are tools that are available now for folks to use. I’ll show my Greenwood card and that’s something that’s available to you right now.
Lisa Calhoun
That’s awesome. Ryan, thanks for making time to share a little bit more of the story. I’m excited about seeing you continue to develop and write the next chapter with what’s going on at The Gathering Spot.
Ryan Wilson
Thank you. I appreciate it.
Lisa
We’re thrilled to have you as an Atlanta Startup Podcast listener to help you get the most out of the experience. Let me invite you to three insider opportunities from our host Valor Ventures. First, want to be a guest on this amazing show. Reach out to our booking team at atlantastartuppodcast.com. Click on booking, It’s a no-brainer from there. Are you raising a seed round? Valor definitely wants to hear from you. Share your startup story at valor.vc/pitch. Are you a woman or minority-led startup valor sister program? The Startup Runway Foundation gives away grants to promising startups led by underrepresented founders. The mission of the Startup Runway Foundation is connecting underrepresented founders to their first investors. Startup runway finalists have raised over $40 million. See if you qualify for one of these amazing grants at startuprunway.org. You can also sign up for our next showcase for free there. Let me let you go today with a shout-out to Startup Runway presenting sponsor Cox Enterprises and to our founding partners, American Family Institute, Truist, Georgia Power, Avanta Ventures, and Innovators Legal. These great organizations make Startup Runway possible. Thanks for listening today and see you back next week.
