Introduction: Welcome to Five & Thrive: a weekly podcast highlighting the Southeast’s most interesting news, entrepreneurs, and information of the week, all under 5 minutes. 

My name is Jon Birdsong and I’m with Atlanta Ventures.

When we set out to do a five minute podcast over a year ago, said said we’ll need 6 months to get enough data and adjust strategy if needed. Not only did we do six months, we consistently put something out weekly for a year. As we start our 52nd podcast, I’m here to say this will be our last one. In one year, there have been thousands upon thousands of downloads with days worth of listening around each episode. The numbers are good but, I also think we can make an even bigger impact with storytelling and startups, therefore, we’re going to take some time to ruminate on the several ideas brewing around media, podcasting, content, and more. We have seen the power and leverage of short-form content and are hooked, however we can be even better, bigger, and more impactful. If you really miss us, we’re stacking up guests on the Atlanta Story Podcast throughout the summer so follow along with more stories of building and creating over there as well. The next guest is a good one. With all that said, buckle in for our 52nd and final Five and Thrive and thank you, the several thousands of you, who have listened to an episode over the past year. We’re closing this chapter but the next one will be even better, I promise       

Major Announcement of the Week: Major news coming out of Soft Bank’s Open Opportunity Fund, local investor and entrepreneur, Paul Judge is taking the lead as Chairman to invest $150M into minority entrepreneurs. Last year, black founders received 1% of venture capital investment and the Open Opportunity fund is a major step and resource to invest in the best. Congratulations to Paul on this fantastic opportunity and focus. We put a link in the show notes to his interview with TechCrunch.    

Companies Coming Up: Gridline, out of Atlanta, is the company coming up. Gridline helps any accredited investor gain access and insight to alternative assets quickly and easily. Their software provides the individual investor with access to funds typically reserved for institutions and large family offices all while ensuring compliance. Check out Gridline if you’re looking to access more alternative investment opportunities which is led by CEO Logan Henderson. 

Event of the Week: Atlanta Startup Convos passed 3000 members this past week and they keep getting better and better. The next one is on Wednesday, June 21st. The three companies are Ubiquitous, Novel, and Turbine. All of them are products worth taking a look at and putting a save the date on the calendar.  

Raise a Glass: Congrats to Zack Eikenberry of HookSecurity for closing a $5.5M round led by Tampa Bay Ventures. If y’all remember, Hook Security provides modern and engaging approaches to cybersecurity. Their team of 21 is growing and they are tackling the market. Keep an eye on them as the Tampa startup scene is bustling.  

Blog Post of the Week: We have a long blogroll of entrepreneurs and investors we subscribe to and one of my favorites, Fabrice Grinda. He just came out with a great post titled: Timing is Everything. He analyzes how great entrepreneurs and investors are excellent predictors of what will happen in the future. However, what many folks get wrong is the timing. He brings in some examples of the dot com bust including Pets.com and Webvan, both of those markets have created mult-billion dollar businesses today, it was just back in the late 90’s, they were just too early. However, Fabrice goes into a laundry list of markets, ideas, and products he is excited about for any entrepreneur to go build the next great business. I highly recommend it as the opportunities out there are limitless! 

And on that note, that is 5 minutes. 

Major Announcement of the Week: Paul Judge 

Company Coming Up: Gridline

Event of the Week: Atlanta Startup Convos

Raise a Glass: Hook Security

Blog Post of the Week: Fabrice Grinda: Timing is Everything

Introduction: Welcome to Five & Thrive: a weekly podcast highlighting the Southeast’s most interesting news, entrepreneurs, and information of the week, all under 5 minutes. 

My name is Jon Birdsong and I’m with Atlanta Ventures.

Companies Worth Applying To: We have two companies worth applying to right now that are worth taking a serious look. 

First is ViewFi, the telemedicine company out of Atlanta led by CEO, Michael Williamson. ViewFi connects you with the world’s top medical experts to get your pain or injury diagnosed, without the wait. They are hiring for a Sports Medicine Physician. The process for ViewFi helps you connect, diagnose, plan, and recover all through a simple application alongside a trusted and premier medical professional. 

Next up, this past week, A.T. Gimbel and team hosted another fantastic Atlanta Healthcare Meetup with Ryan Jones, the CEO of Florence Healthcare. Florence frees clinical trials from bottlenecks, so they can accelerate and scale. Sites are drowning under the demands of today’s clinical research trials, slowing clinical trials, increasing costs, and delaying cures. Florence’s Site Enablement Platform helps sites streamline operations, enable remote monitoring, and integrate study workflows. They are hiring for several roles including a Senior Sales Executive, Salesforce Admin, and several others. We put the link in the show notes and if you didn’t watch the live interview with Ryan, I highly recommend listening to our events page.

Podcast of the Week: I have not listened to the entire episode because it is 3 and half hours in length and my bike ride is a crisp 30 minutes, but I’m well into it and it comes highly recommended from a trusted source. This podcast comes from the show Acquired and it is the full history of LVMH, and how Bernard Arnault turned a $15m investment in a bankrupt French textile company into the world’s largest individual fortune. This story is equal parts Berkshire Hathaway, Barbarians at the Gate, Steve Jobs / Ted Turner etc and worth any entrepreneur’s time. We put the link in the show notes.

Quiet Giant: One of the Top 10 Most Innovative companies that piqued my interest last week from the TAG Summit was DataSeers. They have over 80 employees.  This is an enterprise solution for fintech and banking operations that helps with onboarding, ACH processing, anti-fraud, compliance, reconciliation, and Analytics. FinanSeer® converts raw transaction data to meaningful information that financial institutions can use to optimize their processes and protect their customers. It cleans data and automates workflows to increase operational efficiency across several aspects of the business. .

Feature Release of the Week: Major major release and put I “release” in air quotes as this is a release of physical space, but Intown Golf Club in Charlotte opened their doors this week to the initial Founding 100 members and it was a spectacular event. If you are in Charlotte and love to play golf, socialize, and like good food and spirits, Intown Golf Club is the place for you. The outdoor patio, putting green, and firepit is just the beginning before you head indoors to 8 simulators, private dining, a massive bar and much more. Shout out to the team on creating another special location.  

Raise a Glass: You know was I putting together this week’s Five and Thrive and was a little surprised there had not been a funding announcement this week of any sort, and then all of sudden, right before I hit send on this bad boy, I see an update that Jason Rubbotom’s Clovery just raised a very impressive $19M let by GroTech Ventures. Cloverly built the first API in the world for carbon credits and the company has grown to become the leading digital infrastructure powering the voluntary carbon market. Their software is helping any company scale their impact by providing the infrastructure to supply or buy carbon credits with the click of a few buttons.  

Congratulations to Cloverly and team on the next phase of growt! 

Annnnnd that’s five minutes!

Companies Worth Applying To: ViewFi, Florence Healthcare 

Podcast of the Week: Acquired: LVMH

Feature Release of the Week: Intown Golf Club

Raise a Glass: Cloverly