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. 

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

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Well, it’s Friday of Masters Week this morning and I trust several listeners have that extra browser tab open this week as we all watch the giants of golf traverse Augusta National as they play the first major of the year. But back to the regularly scheduled program as there is a lot going on! Let’s start off with three value add events next week. 

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Events of the Week: The first event is the Women in Tech Meetup at the Atlanta Tech Village. Lauren Marturano of Zinnia (which is client events and team events made effortlessly) is headlining this event with the presentation around The Art of Self-Promotion. The event is $10 and held on April 12th at noon. Last week I mentioned we started a new meetup around AI, well the details are here. This Tuesday at 5:00 p.m. we are hosting folks to discuss how they are using AI, what they are building, and more. The event will be held in the community room of the Atlanta Tech Village. Lastly, we have Atlanta Startup Convos on Wednesday at 8:00 a.m. The three companies presenting are Enolytics, Nauvus and AMP.

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Company Coming Up: Softgiving is making major strides. They are hiring, they are starting to rebrand, and they are collecting several customers as they become the platform to market your product through live twitch streams. I caught up with their CEO last week. The momentum is significant with them as they partner with major brands to get consumer products in front of potential customers who watch live streaming services like twitch. Give Softgiving a look if you’re interested in seeing a company building brick by brick. 

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Product of the Week: We covered this company back in October out of Charlotte and it’s always fascinating how entrepreneurs evolve their business whether it’s through positioning, product, or go-to-market but the co-founder of Spendly Shannan Caulk provided an update on Spendly. Seven months ago, Spendly would tell you if you were overpaying for financial services, today, they’ve evolved the platform into a marketplace allowing business owners to find the best deals on the market. So far, businesses have been able to save $20K (avg.) a year with Spendly. They’ve raised $500k, signed up 20+ financial professionals, and are serving customers today. 

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New Fund of the Week: The Jurassic Capital team has launched a new pre-seed fund cleverly named: Primordial. They are targeting early-stage tech startups with less than $500K in ARR. Jenn Summe is leading the charge at Primordial with the full support of Joe and the Jurassic Capital team. Excited to see what gets backing in the future months. We put a link in the show notes to their new website. 

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Companies Worth Applying To: We’ve covered them before on their product and pivot and now this company out of Jacksonville is hiring for Customer Success team members. Hazelnut, which provides software for restaurants to maximize order efficiency, is hiring for an increasing number of customers they are closing and onboarding. Check out Hazlnut today, we put a link in the show notes. 

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Annnnnnnd that’s 5 minutes! 

Events of the Week: Women + Tech, Atlanta AI MeetUp, Atlanta Startup Convos

Company Coming Up: Softgiving

Product of the Week: Spendly

New Funding of the Week: Primordial

Companies Worth Applying To: Hazlnut