August 4, 2022

📅Events on the Calendar: Dell for Startups Pitch Event Jacey Lucus with Pitch Practice 📈Quiet Giant: Neighborly Software 📦Product of the Week: 📝Blog of the week: Jason Lemkin

E10 | Zinnia, Curricula, Hook Security, Imln

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.

Countdown to Launch:

After 5 months of customer discovery, brand development, and early prototype mockups, Zinnia was announced this week out of the Atlanta Ventures Studio, led by CEO Lauren Marturano. As partial or fully remote work continues to trend up, traditional office space is needed less, yet employee in person interaction is still as vital as it was pre-covid. So how is this solved? Through corporate off-sites. The time demands and personal requirements to plan and produce an offsite are beyond exhausting and highly expensive. Zinnia not only saves companies tens of thousands of dollars in site selection, it provides content, packaging, and planning so your team, company, or division can connect often and effectively. Have Zinnia plan your next offsite.

Company Coming Up:

Coming off the major news of Curricula’s acquisition by Huntress in the cyber security training and awareness space, another player has produced a product catching the attention of customers in the white hot market. HookSecurity out of Tampa Bay is solving a similar problem around catching phishing attempts, security training, and continual monitoring. What both Curricula and HookSecurity focus on is making the experience of cyber security fun and interactive. In a world where every sizable company is a customer, look for more players to enter the space as HookSecurity is this week’s company coming up.

Market Ready for a Startup:

Keeping on the theme of launching startups, we at Atlanta Ventures have a spreadsheet with 100+ markets that we believe are ripe to start a company. These thoughts on the markets are way better out in the universe for listeners to hear than on a sleepy spreadsheet tucked away in a Google file. And, if the market analysis is done right at this early stage, it is less about big markets today but which markets will be big in the next 5 to 10 years. For example: software that powers autonomous lawn mowers through Greenzie, or private indoor golf clubs orchestrated by Intown Golf Club or any home management hassle eradicated with Zeto. This month’s market ready for a startup is security. Not the cyber security mentioned with HookSecurity, but personal security. Here’s what we mean: as a consumer, on one end of the market is your traditional home security system. This could be Brinks, SimpliSafe, ADP, etc. On the far other end is a private security guard costing six figures full time. Where and what is the option for example $500/month service around security option. Today, one example is the neighborhood patrol where neighbors unscientifically contribute to the venmo account or something of like to make sure the patrol has allocated hours in the neighborhood. We believe there is a market ready for a technology advancement in the security space. Atlanta’s FlockSafety has proven neighborhoods and municipalities will pay for license plate reading. What ideas and solutions are out there for a scrupulous way to monitor and be proactive about the security of your house? We have a few ideas but only the market will truly reveal the answer. If you’re interested in exploring ideas around this problem. Let us know and we’d love to talk.

Raise a Glass:

It was announced in Ebony this week that Atlanta entrepreneur, Lauren Wilson, CEO of ImIn, closed a $1M seed round from CollabCapital. ImIn delivers the on-demand flexibility and experience to any workforce. Now companies can quickly adjust, schedule, re-schedule, and optimize the workforce management based on the company’s and employee’s needs. Congratulations to Lauren and the entire CollabCapital team!

Annnnd, that’s 5 minutes.

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