William Leonard
Today on the Atlanta Startup Podcast, I’m joined by the Director of Corporate Partnerships at Plug And Play, Jessica Vargas, and her colleague Nate Hinman, who is a Senior Director of Enterprise Technology. We dive into what Plug and Play is and how their robust corporate network helps early-stage startups work with some of the world’s largest companies. We also get up to speed on how they’re plugging into the GA ecosystem, most recently through the Savannah accelerator, which is focused on the last-mile delivery and supply chain space. And then the Congo shifts to why the world’s largest innovation platform is hyper-focused on Georgia and the cities here driving commerce. I really want to give a special shout-out to Jessica and Nate for joining me on the podcast. This was a fun episode to record, so let’s jump right in. I’d like to share some brief highlights before we begin today’s episode. This week you’ll catch Valor General Partner, Lisa Calhoun and one of our amazing founders Sofiat Abdulrazaaq of Goodfynd at the Illuminarium, Tuesday, November 1st, attending a dynamic discussion, breaking down the past, present, and future of venture investing. We really want to thank Erik Sebusch of Mercer for the invite. Don’t forget that applications for Startup Runway, which is one of the largest pitch competitions for underrepresented founders at the pre-seed stage is taking place December 15, at the Woodruff here in Atlanta. If you want to pitch and have the opportunity to win a $10,000 grant for your startup, you can apply and learn more at startuprunway.org. Now, let’s jump into today’s episode. Nathan, Jessica, thank you so much for joining me today. How are y’all doing?
Nate Hinman
Doing great, William. Thanks for having us.
Jessica Vargas
Yeah, thank you so much.
William Leonard
It’s great that you’re both here in town. This is at the tail end of Atlanta innovation week and I think Megan was just saying that it may turn into Atlanta innovation month with the robust activity that we’ve seen, but we’d love to maybe kick it off with just a brief rundown of your weeks here in Atlanta and what you all did for innovation week.
Jessica Vargas
Yes. I started off on Monday at The Lola for a women’s luncheon. That was super cool to see Spelman there, to see Georgia Tech there, and to see all of the community partners of women all in one room was amazing. It just spoke to my heart to see the ecosystem here in Atlanta. Tuesday, we kind of tackled the Atlanta innovation crawl. We started at MAC then went to ATV, then went to Techstars. We had to jump off the bus then because we ended up having some off-site meetings at some other places. And then on Wednesday, we were in full force where we went into Venture Atlanta all day. And then Nate, actually, we tagged the team. He ended up taking the latter half of the day and tackling some other meetings if you want to go ahead and talk about those as well.
Nate Hinman
The week’s been fantastic. Tons of people here, a lot of folks that we know, and a lot of new faces. It’s been fantastic that the organizations that pulled this off, so MAC and Invest Atlanta, all did a fantastic job. We’re very happy to be here. One of the few events that we went to was Goodie Nation’s Intentionally Good Summit. That was really powerful. We’re building close ties with Joey Womack and his team and we see them and that community come together for that event, recognize a few people from their own organization and from the ecosystem was really, really interesting. Had a great networking event after that. Last night, we were also at Google For Startups for the Black and Latino Founders Fund. Jewel Burks organized that. We’ve been speaking with her and seeing how we can get involved with Google for Startups as well as the Collab Capital group. A lot of people that we’ve been talking to virtually or Jessica are here in person, at least. I’m in Silicon Valley most of the time. This week was just a great opportunity for us to come together and put a face to a name and actually have some fun outside of a 30-minute zoom call.
William Leonard
Definitely. The energy here this week and last week has been off the charts and really contagious, I must say. But I would love to dive into the formal conversation today. I want to level say here for our audience to help them understand who Plug And Play are in what you all do. We’d love to kick it off with that and then we’ll dive into your respective backgrounds because I think that’s a critical aspect of understanding why you all are here this week in Atlanta.
Nate Hinman
Sure. So to give you the 30,000-foot view or the elevator pitch, Plug and Play is a global innovation platform or the largest global innovation platform out there. Essentially, we provide three main services. We run accelerator programs for early-stage, and growth-stage startups. We provide innovative services to Fortune 1000. We have a corporate innovation team and service. We have a venture capital arm. When you break down those three things, when it comes to our accelerator programs, are 100% free programs for startups. We don’t require equity. Also, we’re not guaranteeing investment but it can be a hybrid or virtual hybrid in terms of virtual and impersonal participation. You get the same perks that you get in any incubator accelerator that you see. Mentorship for some sort of co-working space, such as professional services and firms providing discounts. We get law firms, accounting firms, and HR advisors, providing discounted services to the startups in our program, as well as Google AWS, and Azure cloud credit. That’s all basically standard for any startup accelerator. Where we differentiate on the accelerator side is what we actually do with the startups in the program and how those startups are selected for the program. We work with 535+ Fortune 1000 organizations. They sit on the board of each accelerator program. Each startup that gets selected in that program is selected by that board. They select them because the technology that they’re providing aligns with some sort of strategic initiative that a corporation has. During the three-month programs, our startups are really, in addition to meeting investors, and mentors, and participating in workshops, they’re also meeting with their target customers. So if they’re a fintech startup, we have 75 financial institutions that sponsor our FinTech program. As a startup in our program, you have three months to work with those innovation teams, get pilots up and running, figure out what strategic opportunities there are, and then from there, partner, get investment, and maybe be acquired. It’s basically up to the startup and the corporation to figure out what they want to do to each other. So on the startup side, we’ve accelerated tens of thousands of companies. I think last year, we accelerated over 2600 companies across the world. We have 44 offices around the world. In each of these locations, we’re running programs, and working with local organizations. In the second leg, we do a lot of things and it’s kind of a mouthful to explain what we do, but the second arm of our business is our corporate innovation services. Our partners in Atlanta, for example, Chick-fil-A, Coca-Cola, Aflac, and Georgia Pacific. We’re also worked with Westrock, Porsche, and Mercedes. Those partners are sponsoring programs for early-stage companies. They’re also working with us for strategic innovation and innovating on their roadmaps for technical development. We are typically working with the CTO office or individuals within the CTO office, usually a VP of Innovation, or Head of Innovation. Oftentimes, we’re also working with CVC groups and FP and M&A teams. But essentially, we work with those organizations in a variety of different ways. The main way is by showing them new technologies that they can adopt. We do what is called deal flow services, where a partner will come to us and say, “Hey, what do we have in AR/VR that might be applicable to our business or a future of work technology? We’re looking for new benefits platforms or recruiting in employee retention technologies.” We have a database of over 55,000 startups that is consistently updated by the startups. We also have a team of 130 ventures, associates, and investment professionals that then take that partner’s request and look at our network and find companies that match what the partner is looking for. And then also goes out and looks at other VC portfolio companies, looks at companies in Techstars, Y Combinator, just looking at trends, trend reports, and Forrester, Gartner, we find technologies, we provide diligence on them. And then the companies that we suggest, we introduced our partners for them to evaluate through, basically a one-on-one session. The outcomes of those sessions can be strategic investments, pilots, acquisitions, white labeling, or whatever it might be. Our job is to be the connector of the two. And then the third leg of what we do is our venture capital arm. We have 130+ venture associates that are subject matter experts. And they essentially source technologies for the 20+ industries we cover. They work with our partners to show them new technologies and then they lead our investments of ours.
William Leonard
That’s awesome. It sounds like this is just one of the most robust programs, not only domestically, but internationally, with multi-layer support. What stages of the company lifecycle you all are working with?
Nate Hinman
We look at seed through Series B, even series seed companies. Because our partners are sitting on the board of these programs and they dictate these focus areas of our sourcing efforts. When it comes to the startups that get into the program, it’s up to the partners. Because the program is equity free, we can get a Series C, and Series D business in the door for them, and they’ll join the program. They don’t need mentorship or co-working space. But five of our partners in the FinTech division said, “Hey, we want to work with this company. Can you invite them to the program?” Because our partner startups are not giving up equity, we can get companies that are later stag/early stage but the sweet spot is Series A/Series B because those companies have actually gotten some market validation, they have a product that’s actually developed, and ready to go to market, they have referenceable customers. In the cybersecurity world, for example, if your US Bank, it’s very difficult for you to work with a startup with 500k in funding and three people. That startup can’t scale to your organization. By having no equity requirement and by working with later-stage companies, when we actually do make those introductions, they’re more meaningful because they’re to actually work with each other. Not meaningful for a seed stage company that is in the development stages because our partners will often come along and say, “Hey, we liked what you’re doing. We’ll give you 500k to be a strategic partner of yours. We want these features developed, can you kind of work on that over the next six months?:” Much of mentorship and investment.
William Leonard
That makes perfect sense. It’s multilayered support for multi-stage companies here. And so Jessica, would love to dive into your background a bit and then move into your day-to-day as the director of corporate partnerships, what, what does a typical week look like for you?
Jessica Vargas
I actually am Bay Area born, Georgia raised, and moved here when I was young right before the Summer Olympics in ‘96. I think I just told you my age. I ended up living here all the way up to Georgia State. After Georgia State, I need a change of scenery. My dad was still in the Bay Area, moved back, and two weeks later, I started at Plug And Play and have been with the company since this December, going to 10 years. I can’t believe I’m saying that out loud, too. It’s been super exciting. I did operations and ran our global headquarters there where we have 400 startups there, the CVC side of the corporations as well have office space there, and we have over 700 events like that. The place is just contagious and the vibe you get once you walk into the building. It’s been super exciting to see Plug And Play grow. When COVID hit, it was one of those things where I was a personal decision. I decided, I call my mom, she was still here, and she was like, “I’m going out for sushi.” They say Georgia never closed. And I’m like, I can’t take my kids to the playground like what is going on. I ended up pitching to Saeed, our co-founder, I want to go to Atlanta. Let me help open Atlanta as much as possible Nate actually had started the initiative during COVID, as well. It’s a little difficult for him as well. I moved back a year ago and I’ve just been getting meetings in front of the corporations because the program doesn’t work unless we have funding. Getting in front of their faces, setting up meetings, getting to know the community, getting to know the universities here, just diving in as much as possible, and going to every event under the sun. They’ve tagged me as the opposite of “Where’s Waldo?” because they see me everywhere.
William Leonard
You have been with Plug And Play for some time now. You hear back in Atlanta where you went to school, what are you doing on a day-to-day as the Director Of Corporate Partnerships now at Plug And Play?
Jessica Vargas
I’ve been lucky enough to work. ATDC has been super kind to let me use office space there and also the RICE center. I’ll take meetings there, and get to know the startups there. Goodie Nation as well. We work with Antoine and I always butcher his name, Avoilan. Getting to know the startups because obviously, whenever we do have our program, we are going to be working with these startups. Since they’re going to be at a different stage, hopefully by the time our program does start, and so just like I said, just getting to know everybody here and setting up as many meetings as possible.
William Leonard
Nice. We’ll definitely dive into a bit more of what you all are doing here in the state of Georgia, Augusta, Atlanta, and Savannah. But, Nate, I know you are more so based out of Silicon Valley, here in Atlanta this week. Tell us more about your path to Plug And Play and what drives your productivity on a day-to-day basis.
Nate Hinman
I work out of our headquarters in Silicon Valley out of Sunnyvale. Been with Plug And Play for five years in December, originally joined our ventures team so I was originally a Ventures Associate for FinTech and cybersecurity. And then I opened our cybersecurity accelerator program and ran that for about two years and that’s now morphed into enterprise technology. That’s the program I’m running now, prior to joining Plug And Play, I was at a private equity firm in Los Angeles called K1 about so $5+ billion AUM, a private equity firm invested exclusively in enterprise B2B software. I was on their deal origination team there. Evaluating new investment opportunities and pitching them to our investment committee and then doing diligence. That’s really where I got my feet wet in investing and enterprise technology. Prior to K1, I was at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles where I studied finance. Since my time at K1, I really enjoyed minority investments and investing 10-20%, nothing over 50% of the business and these growth investment opportunities that we were really making a lot of those investments and then started doing more buyout deals, which became less and less fun and more of just finding companies and acquiring them and boosting EBITDA. We wanted to get back into early-stage investing that’s why I joined Plug And Play, and through my role now, I’m less kind of investing on a day-to-day basis, but I’m still very involved with our investment team and finding new investment opportunities, bringing them to investment committees for investments. Atlanta is my number one initiative that I’m working on Jessica. Typically, I’m working on business development, forming partnerships, even working on events, going to events, looking at investment opportunities, and such. It’s a busy workload but I really like it. I’m working in three different time zones right now. We’re also working on some international offices as well. Atlanta is the number one new city for me in terms of where I’d like us to open a new office. I love being out here and basically coming out once a month, for at least a week for the past nine months now. We’ll get a condo or something.
William Leonard
Atlanta is booming. There are plenty of apartments and condos being built here, trust me. But you all are excited about Atlanta, Georgia, this region here in the southeast. Plug And Play Savannah is a new initiative that’s popping up. I want to dive more into that. Why was Savannah chosen for this accelerator? What are some of the anticipated outcomes that you all have? I know Plug And Play invest across a variety of verticals; FinTech, InsurTech, IoT, healthcare, retail, and supply chain, but want to dive more into this Plug And Play in Savannah. What’s going on there? Tell us more about that.
Jessica Vargas
Obviously, Savannah’s port is the third largest in the world. The Savannah Logistics Innovation Center partnered with us and they wanted to see change, they wanted to see more growth there, and see what technology they can bring to the global logistics supply chain. They partnered with the Savannah Logistics Innovation Center and then also have the partnership with I think Georgia Department of Transportation, the port authority, Georgia Power, Mercer, and Georgia Southern University, so they kind of tackled the whole area for that particular port. They have 12 startups that are in the cohort right now and they’re pitching on November 3rd, for our supply chain expo. If you want to jump in as well, Nate.
Nate Hinman
The partnership is really designed to help the port itself, as well as some of the largest companies working with the port and universities that are providing talent to the port to kind of come together and view supply chain technology innovation. It’s really more designed to be focused on first-mile delivery. Not last mile, it’s getting products off of the ships out of containers and getting those to their respective transport vehicles or whatever they might be in a way that is very streamlined, efficient, and provides security as well. That program is graduating on the third. Just like every other program we have, it’s 100% free to entrepreneurs. If you’re listening to this and you’re in the supply chain space and have a startup, we have a great program for you in Savannah as well as in Silicon Valley.
William Leonard
Nate, quick question. You don’t have to be a Georgia-based or US-based company to participate in the Savannah accelerator. Is that correct or incorrect?
Nate Hinman
That’s correct. We would like to have at least 50% of them be from Georgia at least. How can we help homegrown technology grow within Georgia, Atlanta, Savannah, and then from there, the United States, and then from there internationally. But in the vein of getting the best technology possible for the program, we look globally. We have supply chain programs all over the world. We have networks all over the world, supply chain networks, and startups all over the world because of that. When we go find companies for the next cohort, we put a call for applications out to all of our satellite offices in that way we can see tech from not just local, but around the world that we’re potentially interested in bringing into the program.
William Leonard
I know you mentioned you all have multiple supply chain programs on a global scale. Can you call out any of some of the household names that are in those portfolios, and not even only in the supply chain, but maybe in other verticals like retail, healthcare, hospitality, IoT, and things like that?
Nate Hinman
Shippo is a new unicorn in the freight e-commerce space, a unicorn of ours that we’ve invested in. But then when it comes to partners in the supply chain space, Walmart is one of our biggest partners there. We actually have an office with them in Bentonville, northwest Arkansas, where we’re working with not only Walmart but the Walton family. That’s one of our lead partners for the supply chain fund. They’re involved in not just Bentonville, but also in Silicon Valley. We also work with Maersk, JB Hunt, Tyson Foods, Nike, and Georgia Pacific. Actua, Georgia Pacific’s in our supply chain group and I think 45 others. Some of the leading CPG companies, leading freight and logistics companies, and railroad companies as well, are all working with us for that program.
William Leonard
I know, Jessica, you’ve been here for some time now, working in some of the local offices here. For 2023, what do you foresee as the ultimate goal and the ultimate mission for Plug And Play here in the state of Georgia?
Jessica Vargas
We’re hoping to kick off our program in Q1 and Q2. Our program is going to be enterprise tech, but also, we’re kicking off a DE&Iinitiative here as well, that’s going to be launched actually, next month in our winter summit in our headquarters office. It’s the week of the 15th through the 17th. Any listeners, if you guys are on the West Coast and want to join, by all means, please just go onto our website and register for the event. The last one we had in the summer, we had over 3000 attendees, VCs, corporate partners, and of course, the 200+ companies that were pitching as well. But in regards to Atlanta, just my heart is here. I want to see it grow. I want to see it boom. It’s already booming, of course, but just kind of taking the initiative on the DE&Iside and plugging them into our Silicon Valley, whether its a supply chain company, whether it’s an enterprise company, whether it’s sustainability, whichever, whatever of the 20 verticals we have and just tying them in as much as possible.
William Leonard
Plug And Play is such a robust, global program. I’m sure you’re always seeing a tremendous volume of companies wanting to be in the Plug And Play network, but you can only accept so many. I want to know, from both of yall’s perspectives, what traits, and characteristics you are looking for as you’re evaluating startups who may participate in each cohort. What separates a company from the pack when you are evaluating a particular startup?
Nate Hinman
The way we select companies for our cohorts is very heavily dependent on our corporate partners. They’re the ones that dictate our sourcing efforts for our programs with the companies that we sourced based on topics, trends, capabilities, and also scale. Some of our partners will say we’re only interested in working with Series A or later so those inputs go into our sourcing, source for six months, and put together a list of 100-ish companies for each cohort. That list contains executive summaries, competitive advantage, fundraising amounts, founder background, and the search that goes to all of our partners. The partners review this list and then vote on the companies that get in. So really, to answer that easily, it’s up to our partners to choose you but why would you be chosen by our corporate partners, right? So you’re basically at the tip of the spear in terms of what’s innovative in that industry. If you’re kind of working on technology, that’s 3-5 years old now, you haven’t raised money, you’re not necessarily going to be that successful in our program. Companies that are relatively young, responding to a new market trend, and then also constructing a very strong use case, being able to say, hey Maersk or Coca Cola, or Chick-fil-A, you should work with us, because we can do XYZ for your business, and then actually have the proof to back it up. When you get into a pilot, be able to show off what you can do. To get into our program, we like to see a strong pilot, and a strong leadership team, sometimes serial entrepreneurs are basically chosen because they have had several exits in the past. That’s not the only reason why we choose them. A very strong team, hitting a new market trend, and also at a stage where you’re ready to scale to market. If you are very, very early stage, we can help you. You’re probably not going to get as much help as a company that is Series A that has a pilot-level product that we can bring into our partner organizations. As we said earlier, it’s free for startups. We don’t look at how much money they’ve raised. We’re going to take 5% of your business for this three-month program, which doesn’t influence its size, or scale doesn’t influence it. And then geography doesn’t influence it either. It does a little bit but typically, any international startup will come to Silicon Valley. If they make it into the program, we provide them with three months of co-working space, and then they get a bunch of free services and credit. It’s affordable to them.
William Leonard
That is incredibly helpful for us to know. The corporate partners are deciding the companies that are coming in and that you all be working with but it does have to be the frontier type of technology and innovation that’s happening. Very strong team.
Nate Hinman
I might add, that, because you’re selected by the corporate partner, that means that that Fortune 1000 monster in your industry is very interested in what you’re doing. But if you get into the program, it’s because a partner has said Plug And Play source technology in this field and then they looked at 15 companies in the same field. And they’ve said, this one seems the most promising, we want to work with you for the three-month program to get a pilot up and running. Once we get that pilot running, we’re going to work with you. If it works, you found your new blue chip Fortune 1000 customer, here’s a massive contract for startups that’s incredibly valuable. That’s the special sauce of Plug And Play and why it is a little bit more selective in terms of who gets in. Any company can apply to our ecosystem and any company can be in our database which is very useful. Because down the road, a partner of ours might say, hey, we’re interested in this technology and even though the startup didn’t go through the cohort, their information is still there. You might want to meet with a company that we’ve never had go through a program but six months from now might get introduced to the CTO of JPMorgan or something. It’s that sort of connection we try to strive for.
William Leonard
This has been incredibly helpful in terms of level setting who Plug And Play, how you all invest, and how you all really support the companies that you all are working with. I think the corporate partnership angle is one of the most unique attributes that you all have and that sets you apart from other innovative programs out there working with startups at this stage. I appreciate both of you coming on sharing this information because a great plethora of our audience is early-stage, seed-stage, pre-seed Series A founders who are building software not only in the Southeast US but really throughout the country. And then we also have early-stage and growth-stage investors who are listening and then many ecosystem players like yourselves. I appreciate you all coming on and sharing it and looking forward to learning more about how Atlanta in the state of Georgia can contribute to yall’s work on a day-in and day-out basis.
Nate Hinman
We really appreciate the time and just to add a little bit to the previous question on what we want to see in Atlanta going forward, our job is to connect people, we’re connecting corporations to startups, startups to VCs, and to corporations, universities, everyone that’s kind of represents the value chain of the innovation space. Within Atlanta, we want to do the same thing and collaborate. We’re not coming in to push out the existing accelerators or incubators. We don’t view ourselves as competitive with any of them, even though we have a lot of the same clients. Really what we want to do is help put Atlanta on a global map, and bring in Silicon Valley investors. When we come in, we’re going to be investing heavily in the area. We’re going to be co-investing with 200+ VCs with whom we work within the United States and globally. Bringing our network, extending our network here, and then building upon it here. Other companies like Engage, TechStars, 500, Cox, and their relationships with those organizations, we want to collaborate with them. And then with our DE&I program, our tribe program, we are hoping to work with HBCUs, Georgia Tech, Emory as well, Georgia State, and basically all the universities in the area. Help their entrepreneurs, get into programs, give additional mentorship, get non-diluted funding as well, and then connect with our corporate network in the area. With that, we’re looking at doing career fairs for corporate partners working with universities. We’re also looking at hosting a large gala and fundraiser at some point in the future to provide additional funding for the startups in our DE&I program. And so even on that said, we’re hoping to collaborate with Jay Bailey and RICE center, and Joey Womack in Goodie, as I mentioned, Jewel Burks Williams from Google for Startups and Collab. There are a million things that we can do with all of them because we invest, we have this corporate network, and we have this service that provides connectivity for everyone. Lots of events, lots of investment, and lots of collaboration. We’re really, really excited about it. Jessica has been doing a fantastic job here, getting to know the ecosystem and putting our name on the map. Hopefully in Q1, we’ll be opening doors, we’re looking at Midtown, sort of around the tech square, as well as even Buckhead and North perimeter, to even so where our partners want us to go is where we’ll go. We’ll bring our expertise, our funding, and our startups. Really excited about Atlanta. The city is amazing. There are a couple of things that we always say when we’re looking for new cities. Are there Fortune 100s/Fortune 1000s in that city? Yes, in Atlanta, there’s 31, 75% of Fortune 1000s have a presence here. Are there good universities? Yes. I mean, you look at Georgia Tech, Emory, and the HBCUs. And then also you kind of look at a mindset that people have there. Is everyone kind of stuck in their own, “We’re going to do it our way.” mentality, or is it one of open collaboration? And so with Atlanta, I’ve never seen a city more open and willing to collaborate. Every time I talk to someone, I get three more introductions. Every time I come back, my network’s grown tenfold. It’s just a really exciting city to be a part of. I live in California. I am looking at moving over here. Stay up and running. Jessica and I together out here, full time, I think we’ll be doing it. We’ve got a couple of events coming up. I know we’re out of time here but just to get it out there. November 3rd, our Savannah Supply Chain Expo. There’s event information online, you can find it on our website, www.plugandplaytechcenter.com Our big, winter Summit where we bring in 2500 individuals, investors, startups, corporations, VPs, executives, CEOs, etc. That’ll be November 15 through 17. Every one of our 19 cohorts is graduating so tons of really cool startups and corporate partners for each of those verticals. Jerry Rice is speaking. Jay Bailey, we had scheduled but unfortunately, we have conflicts so it looks like he’s not going to be able to make it. We do have a big program launch for our DE&I program. We want to be a part of that, too. We’d love for anyone on this podcast to take a look. It’s free and it’s a really good time.
Jessica Vargas
Anybody listening wants to reach out to us. It’s just really easy. jessica@pnptc.com or nate@pnptc.com. We’d love to hear from you guys.
William Leonard
I’m so glad that you all are boots on the ground here, building out these initiatives, and I’m excited to see them come to fruition next year. You’re right, Atlanta, is, in my opinion, one of the best cities in the world. You mentioned the strong density of Fortune 1000s and Fortune 500s that are here, and the dynamic and diverse universities that are here. And then you just think about the commerce that happens here with the busiest airport in the world. And then you’ve got the Savannah Port down there on the coast. I think Atlanta has a lot going for from an economic standpoint, which is going to make just the state thrive over the next few decades here. Excited that y’all are here, contributing to the ecosystem, and looking forward to partnering in whatever fashion that we can.
Jessica Vargas
For sure.
Nate Hinman
Definitely, William. I wanted to learn a little bit about your group too, but we’ll find another time.
William Leonard
We will for sure. Jessica and Nate, it was definitely my pleasure to have you on the Atlanta Startup podcast. Maybe we’ll have you all back on here maybe next year or the year after.
Jessica Vargas
Amazing.
William Leonard
Take care.
Nate Hinman
Have a good one, William.
Lisa Calhoun
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.
