Lisa
Welcome to the Atlanta Startup Podcast. I’m Lisa Calhoun, General Gartner at Valor Ventures. And today, we have a fantastic special guest, David Cummings, a serial founder and entrepreneur that is a living legend right here in Atlanta and the founder of the Atlanta Tech Village. David, welcome to the show.
David Cummings
Thanks, Lisa. Glad to be here.
Lisa
A lot of people think of you as this incredible entrepreneur, high on a hill, literally in Buckhead with the fabulous Atlanta Tech Village, the fourth largest tech accelerator in the country. Yet I know that you started your entrepreneurship much younger. Could you take us back and tell us a little bit about your first business?
David Cummings
I was always looking for ways to solve market problems. Back then I didn’t think of them as market problems, I thought of them as more opportunities. As a young child, I was doing things like buying baseball cards online and selling them on newsgroups. So, I had found a little gap in the market, if you will, after the strike in the early 90s in Major League Baseball. I found that if I wanted to buy Atlanta Braves baseball cards, they were full Beckett price, they’re full retail price. But, if I went on the internet, I could buy Atlanta Braves baseball cards from people in Seattle, Washington. And they were 50% less than retail price. And so I went on the internet and I started buying baseball cards specifically Atlanta Braves players from different regions of the country at a significant discount and then I would sell them to people in the southeast region at full price. And [at] that early age, finding those arbitrage opportunities or just looking for ways to, you know, find inefficiencies in the market has always excited me. I think it’s just sort of a strange thing that I’ve always had a passion for.
Lisa
That passion has suited you well. Then you went to college at Duke. Were you still involved as an entrepreneur and a founder in college?
David Cummings
When I was in highschool, I was bitten by the web bug. I built a bunch of websites for local businesses. I grew up in Florida and so I built websites for local doctors, local auto parts stores, a local private investigator. This is back in the day where building a website was truly writing code from scratch– Front Page existed. Dreamweaver existed. But as a high schooler, I was hand coding my way in a small consulting business. Once I got to college, I just kept doing it.
I built websites for professors and departments. I built websites for nonprofits in the Durham, North Carolina area, websites for sororities and fraternities. It was fun. Building a website is part programming. So, writing the HTML, the JavaScript, the CSS, and also full-on web design. I spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours in Photoshop designing websites. And so, I could scratch the technical itch, building the server deploying the code —and then I could scratch the design itch, laying out the website, getting feedback, iterating on it, working on color palettes. As an entrepreneur to get the chance to write code and to design the interface. I really just got really excited about it. I really enjoyed it.
Lisa
You know, anyone who has used Front Page or Dreamweaver, of course has to be a little bit older– but that is one sure incentive to learn to code!
David Cummings
That’s right. So, I was really lucky my freshman year in college. Up until that point, I had done C and C++ programming in high school and obviously I’d done HTML and Photoshop but I really hadn’t done anything outside of the windows ecosystem. And so, I show up freshman year and my college roommate is running a Linux server in our dorm room. This is 1998, so Linux hadn’t even been around that long. So, he’s running a Linux server. He’s using Perl scripts. He’s way ahead in terms of open source movement. And so, I feel very lucky that at that place in time, I was able to be exposed to some of the things that have been just transformative for the past 20 plus years in the tech industry.
Lisa
I know you have a huge passion for supporting other founders. You’ve certainly been a huge supporter of mine and makes a difference. When you look back to some of the things you learned in your first 10 years of really being a founder. What are some of the things you wish people had told you then or that you wish you knew then that you had to learn purely on experience?
David Cummings
So the old adage that everything takes twice as long and cost twice as much is definitely true. For me, looking back, the things that really stand out as my most important lessons learned. One was the whole field of dreams. I thought I knew more than the market. I thought that if I came up with a good idea and built a great product, that the world would be the path to my door. And that was my first really hard lesson. I spent a tremendous amount of time and energy and recruited people and built software to make it easy to update websites, content management software. And I thought we had a cool product and nobody cared. And so for me, that first lesson learned is the field of dreams doesn’t work. You really got to build the product with the customer side by side. This idea of having the closest relationship possible to the customer, the customer influences and informs of what should be built. And then when it’s built, you really have to figure out how to get the product into the hands of the people who need it most. This idea of go to market or sales and marketing or customer acquisition. And so, for me early on, I thought I could just build something and the world would want it. I thought that once it was built, they would automatically find it. Building it hand in hand with the customer, and then spending a significant amount of time and energy, making sure that the product is put into the hands of the customer are two really important early lessons in my career.
Lisa
Those are valuable. You know, I know that I’m one of the stories you shared with me a while ago is that when you were looking for some of those first customers, and they were not beating a path to your door, you didn’t sit on that and you didn’t have resources past yourself at the time. You actually used the Yellow Pages and called down on the Yellow Pages. Do I remember that correctly?
David Cummings
Yeah, close. So, we built software for content management. 20 years ago, trying to make it easy for non-technical people to update and maintain a website. The pitch was that if you could do email in your web browser, which we take for granted now, but if you can do email in your web browser, you had all the skills to update and maintain a website. And so we had built the software, nobody was buying it. Nobody cared. At the time, almost 20 years ago, Google was an up and comer. And so you could buy Google Ad clicks for pennies. Now the same click for something like Content Management could cost $20 a click, but back then you could get it, for say, 50 cents a click. And so I started buying Google ads for the term Content Management, driving traffic to a downloads landing page. And so we signed up six customers doing it that way and two of the six were colleges and universities.
One was called Yavapai College in Arizona, and one’s called Eckerd College down in [the] Tampa St. Pete area of Florida. So two of our first six customers that we got using Google ads, were colleges and so that was the inspiration. It wasn’t not statistically significant. There wasn’t a big sample size, but listening to the needs that they had. Again, we had built a product in a vacuum. We got lucky that some people bought it and that one category of buy, colleges, it actually worked out really well for their needs. And so then I went down to the Barnes and Noble in Buckhead that went off of Peachtree and I bought this book. The book had every two year and four year public and private college in the United States. So all 4160 and then at the time, my younger brother was a student at Emory. So, I got him to post on the Emory internal job board for students to hire two students as part time sales interns to call all 4160 colleges and universities in North America. And so we were calling for the campus webmaster. We’re calling for the Director of Communications, anybody that was involved. In the web at the time, and so that that luck on the Google AdWords combined with doubling down on colleges, combined with going really deep on cold calling, proved to be very successful in the end.
Lisa
Now, that kind of hustle never gets old. I mean, I think it’s actually that kind of founder energy that moves markets still today. It may not be the Barnes and Noble, where you got the list, calling on a list it’s good. And I think a lot of founders hope that there is some easy button and generally, you know, there isn’t. If there is, wonderful, but generally there isn’t. That brings me to I want to know a little bit more about your latest project Start It Up Georgia. This is a unique time, tell me a little bit more about it.
David Cummings
So, the idea behind Start It Up Georgia is that entrepreneurship is one of the greatest forces for good. I truly believe that entrepreneurship is not a zero sum game. If I invent something that makes your life better, and you invent something that makes my life better, we can buy each other’s products. We can invest in them. We can help grow those businesses. This idea that entrepreneurship creates things that make the world better. Again, it’s not a zero sum game.
And so this idea for Start It Up Georgia really came from reading in the news of all of the challenges around the pandemic, the challenges around the highest unemployment rates we’ve ever seen in Georgia, the challenges around creative destruction, the world is always changing and things like a pandemic can really accelerate those changes. And so this idea came to me, “Why don’t we develop a program to help anybody who wants to be an entrepreneur, and let’s really try to plant 1000 seeds.” You just really never know you plant 1000 seeds and maybe one tree grows. Maybe 10 trees grow, maybe 100 trees grow. Maybe one of those trees becomes a Sequoia tree. And this idea that we can go plant 1000 seeds, help as many people as we possibly can.
And this idea, again, combined with entrepreneurship as a force for good, and that it’s not a zero sum game, that we can actually increase everybody’s quality of living through entrepreneurship. And so the idea is Start It Up Georgia because of the pandemic. A tremendous number of people are working from home. A tremendous number of people can’t leave home. And so the program is delivered entirely over the internet. It’s basically a number of live Zoom webinars by experts across a number of different fields. It’s small accountability groups led by volunteer mentors, and it’s a demo day after the end of the 12 week program.
Everybody who completes the program gets an opportunity to present their idea again over the internet over Zoom in a webinar format. We have $10,000 donated for the top idea from the program. So, at the end of the demo day, we’re gonna have a vote and then whoever gets the most number of votes gets $10,000 as a grant. So, it’s not even equity in the business. It’s a full on grant. And so again, the big idea is entrepreneurship as a force for good. And because of these amazing technologies that we use on a daily basis, like Zoom, like Slack, like email, like the internet, why don’t we make it so that we help as many people as we possibly can?
Lisa
Well, thank you for paying it forward. You know a ton about entrepreneurial education. Tell me a little bit about your background in entrepreneurial education, I think with Atlanta Tech Village, you really have a history and a lot of know-how with putting on programming that’s meaningful for founders.
David Cummings
So my entrepreneurial education, I’ve been passionate about it for decades. When I was an undergraduate in college, the college had a program that was called “house courses” and a house course was where an undergraduate went to a faculty sponsor, put together an agenda for this semester, and got the faculty to sign off on it, and then could teach the course as a pass-fail grade for other classmates. And so, in my dorm room, in college, I was teaching for multiple semesters. And again, I didn’t know any better than anybody else but I had been tinkering with entrepreneurship for several years.
By then, the name of the course I taught in college was Internet Startups and Venture Capital. This is back in the dot com day when I was in college and so it was a very popular topic. We got together and once a week we read different chapters from different books and we were the business plan because we didn’t know any better. At the end of the program, we all turned in our 20 Page business plans. Nowadays, obviously, it’s much more progressive with, you know, the lean startup and customer discovery and market maps and things that are much more useful, primarily just talking to customers and getting feedback early in the process.
And so, for me, I’ve always had a passion for teaching entrepreneurship. Prior to the Tech Village, we ran a program out of the park offices called Shotput Ventures and we did that for a couple years. Every Wednesday night, we would bring in a guest speaker, we would buy pizza for everybody, we would do accountability updates. We spent several years helping a number of startups in the Atlanta region, get their business off the ground, grow their business. After Shotput Ventures and after selling part of the opportunity to buy the Atlanta Tech Village, we’ve hosted thousands, literally thousands of in-person events and a number of virtual events at the Tech Village. One of the programs that we’ve been doing for several years now is the prediction accelerator program. We call it the “It Takes a Village” program focused exclusively on underrepresented founders. So again, a similar format guest speakers around different topics, demo day at the end of the program, mentors throughout.
I’m very passionate about helping spread the good word about entrepreneurship and looking for different ways to engage people that think they might want to be an entrepreneur.
I think, for myself, I always had the bug but the bug had to start somewhere. I had to see somebody do it, I had to read about it., and what I found is that if you can introduce people to other people who have already done it, so if they can see somebody, if they can talk to somebody, that they can interact with somebody who has been there and done that, the feeling and the sensation that I can do it as well goes up 10X. If you read about somebody on the internet, there’s a disconnect like “Okay, that person exists, but I don’t have a connection to them, I don’t see myself in them.” But if you talk to somebody in person, even if it’s over Zoom, or if it’s over the phone, or it’s part of a webinar, there’s this spark that ignites that makes it feel like it’s 10 times more accessible. And so whatever we can do to get the entrepreneurial programming, the mentors, the guest speakers, anything we can do to make it more accessible for everyone, then I think in the end, we’ll be doing a great service for society because again, I believe that entrepreneurship is one of the most positive forces for good and it is not a zero sum game.
Lisa
I couldn’t agree more and I can see that you’ve been preparing for Scale It Up Georgia all your life from literally even teaching in your dorm, to later groups like the one you talked about that small speakers, then Atlanta Tech Village and just adding to that now a fully digital program [which] can reach everyone in Georgia that wants to have some kind of experience.
David Cummings
I love that you just called it “scale it up Georgia” because I think that’s version two.
Lisa
I’m so sorry! Start It Up –
David Cummings
Start It Up Georgia is version one and Scale It Up Georgia is the perfect name for the graduate level entrepreneurship program that we should put on next year after we have a number of success stories this year. I love it!
Lisa
Well, Start It Up Georgia is right now though, and people can apply right now. I mean, this just started a couple of days ago. We jumped on this podcast. This podcast is going up a week after the announcement. So, how do people who want to experience this entrepreneurial education apply?
David Cummings
So, the website is startitupgeorgia.org. So, anybody can go to startitupgeorgia.org, there’s an “Apply Now” button on the site. We ask a number of questions. Very simple questions, questions like “What’s your idea?”, “Why do you want to do it?”, “Why now?”, and from an application process, the program is open to everybody. So, it’s not limited to a certain type of business. It’s not limited to tech companies. Anybody that has an idea that wants to start a company can go on the website, apply right now and join the program. So again, we’re taking advantage of the internet, we’re taking advantage of everything being virtual right now. And again, we want to plant 1000 seeds, you never know what’s going to grow. And so, we’re going to do our best to create as many new companies and as many new jobs as we can possibly help with.
Lisa
So, my favorite question is, how much does it cost?
David Cummings
So the program is totally free. We have a number of volunteers and a number of donors that have paid for everything. Again, it’s all delivered online. And so the accountability groups, the guest speakers, the demo day, the seed capital at the end, everything has already been taken care of.
Lisa
That’s so exciting! So, there is a time limit though. It’s a 12 week program and people have to have their applications in by the time it starts. So, what’s the effective deadline to apply to this incredible free program.?
David Cummings
So, the deadline is to get your application in by the end of July and then the program kicks off August 10, 2020.
Lisa
Awesome.
David Cummings
Timing is perfect to go ahead and apply to the program. But again, it’s all virtual. So, even if you have a day job, or even if you’re unemployed, you can do this in addition to what you’re currently doing. And so, the idea is that sign up for the program, scratch your entrepreneurial itch, give it a shot, and you never know who you might meet. You never know how the idea might develop and you never know what level of success you might be able to attain. And so we want to encourage everybody to apply, everybody [to] go through the program, and everybody scratch that entrepreneurial itch.
Lisa
I think this is fantastic. If I were you and I was listening and I ever even thought maybe someday I’d want to be my own boss. I would be pulling over to the side of the road. and applying right now. It is a pretty easy application process. They took a look at it, and you can take as long as you want, but you could get it done in 10 real minutes. It’s not an extensive application process. So, David, thank you so much for creating this program for Georgians. It is going to be a game changer. I can tell and I know you’re such a numbers driven person. Do you have any sense of your own goals in how many new businesses, how many new entrepreneurs are or how many people who are now their own bosses you’re going to be able to create with it.
David Cummings
Our goal is to help entrepreneurs in Georgia start 100 new companies and create over 1000 new jobs. We recognize that entrepreneurship has a high failure rate, that’s just part of the game. You’re creating something from nothing. We believe that even starting the entrepreneurial process now, even if the first idea doesn’t work, or even the second idea, maybe the third or fourth does work. And so a period of time, you know, it’s gonna take a period of time for the success stories to emerge. We’re optimistic that we can help entrepreneurs start 100 companies and create over 1000 jobs. And again, those hundred companies might be, you know, company number three or four before success. But you never know.
Lisa
You know, the magic of starting is, if you don’t start, you never learned the lessons that bring on the success that you can have. And so there’s truly nothing like actually practicing entrepreneurship. Spoken as a practitioner. That’s how you learn and that’s how founders learn. So, to have an environment that’s safe to learn and practice, and I think it’s so exciting.
I’m really excited for Georgia. I’m excited for people in the program. So, as you look around Georgia’s ecosystem right now, in the time of the pandemic, all bets are off. All habits are changing. Who are some of the people in the community in Georgia that you would recommend that founders or wannabe founders or founder-curious people start tracking or following or maybe try to get into the network of because they’re interesting stories and maybe not the stories that are always in the headlines or the AJC or the Atlanta Business Chronicle but interesting businesses native to Georgia and founders who pay it forward, give it back have interesting things to teach.
David Cummings
So, I got to give a shout out to Karen Houghton who’s running the Start It Up Georgia program. Karen has been a tireless advocate for entrepreneurs. She’s written a number of excellent blog posts that are on the Tech Village website and on other news services. And so, Karen, I think, just through her actions, and through her leadership in the community, has been a real driving force.
Another person that I would recommend following and getting to know is Jacey Lucus. Jacey runs the local nonprofit called Community Bucket, which is a great way to meet people [and] a great way to do community service projects.Jacey does a number of startup related projects at the Tech Village, a number of community events and programs. I would recommend following Karen and Jacey as two leaders in our startup community.
Lisa
Awesome. Thank you so much, David. I really appreciate your time. Really appreciate Start It Up Georgia. And for those who are listening, go apply now! And thanks for being on the program.
David Cummings
Awesome. Thank you, Lisa, so much.
