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. 

New Company of the Week: New year, new companies and job changes and roles are sprouting up everywhere. Chris Klaus of ISS fame announced this week that he has started a new company called Fusen World. Fusen is a Campus startup accelerator platform that connects students with other founders, mentors, and investors. Klaus has been on the pulse of CreateX for several years and supported hundreds of students in that time. I love how he is leveraging technology to broaden the reach. If you’re a student looking for quality resources, check out Fusen World.  

Product of the Week:  The product of the week is called Flowpath. Founded by Alex and Brandon Cummings, Flowpath is the operating system for the facilities management in your building. They automate work orders, maintenance, events, notifications, projects, and reporting in a simple to use platform so now there is a clear visibility into the work needed to get done, getting done, and has been done. Right now, doing this is mainly performed through pen and paper with little significant manual work. Imagine a 10-20, or 40 floor building and all the continual needs and maintenance required to run an efficient show. Flowpath is the solution. Keep Flowpath and their product on your radar. These are companies that go from sticky product to quiet giant in a span of months. 

Concept of the Week: Serial entrepreneur Landon Bennett and I were going back and forth over Vertical CRM’s. The tl;dr or fast forward 30 seconds is that there are still several areas of opportunity to build a $50-$100M+ business in vertical CRM’s. WelcomeHome is a great example as a vertical CRM for senior living homes. The journey takes longer and is oftentimes bootstrapped. Learning the in’s and outs of an industry and building enough of a product where the customer now either replaces their existing product or trains the team and company to do their work in a new way is difficult and takes time but if you get the right market at the right time they work. Vertical CRM’s fit well in the characteristics of the South. We can bootstrap much further than most since the cost of living is lower, comparatively and building a $50-$100+ business with little to no outside capital is a way to create well-paying jobs and produce generational wealth.   

Events of the Week: Earlier this week we had John Larriccia of WelcomeHome. We put that link in the show notes so you can see John interviewed by A.T. Gimbel. Another event to put on your calendar is the first Atlanta Startup Village which is back in gear on Feb 13th at 6:30 p.m. Five pitches, 1 winner.

Acquisitions of the Week: A few months ago, we highlighted MessageGears raised a smooth 62 million. Well some of that investment has now been used to acquire Swrve (with no first “e”). Swrve is a mobile app marketing platform that helps enterprise brands deliver stunning mobile experiences. That makes sense since MessageGears works with some of the largest companies in the world to send emails after integrating with each company’s enormous amount of data. Swrve seems to be an ideal extension of the customization for large brands and businesses, but now through mobile experiences. Congrats to Roger Barnette and team on the acquisition.

Article of the Week: SaaStr founder, Jason Lemkin has been producing some very quality content recently and one of them is the metrical journey of SaaS company, Docebo. Over 15 years, Docebo has just passed the $145m ARR milestone after only raising $14m. Docebo is a learning management system for corporations. Their first seven years were bootstrapped until they raised a small amount that included mainly secondary shares. Here is a company that has consistently increased their ACV, nailed the market-product fit, and compounded growth very well. If the unit economics of your business are sound, keep going, next thing you know, you’ll be at $145M in ARR.   

Talent of the Week: Just recently I heard there is a rockstar People Ops leader out in the market. If you’re looking for someone to lead your company’s HR and PeopleOps, please send me an email jon dot birdsong at atlanta ventures dot com. 

Annnnd that is five minutes!

New Company of  the Week: Fusen World

Product of the Week: FlowPath

Event of the Week: Heathcare Meetup Recap, Atlanta Startup Village

Acquisitions of the Week: MessageGears Buys Swrve

Article of the Week: Five Interesting Learnings from Docebo

Talent of the Week: People Ops - Email jon.birdsong@atlantaventures.com