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: There are several companies looking for SDR’s including Greenzie, AdPipe, and Copient Health. If you or any of your network know a talented recent graduate looking to break into sales, I cannot recommend these options enough. SDR’s are needed across many companies and these three are ones I know that will cultivate them into a valuable, qualified, and efficient sales professional.  

Event of the Week: Last week I was on the Friday Nooner with Pete, Jackie, and Joe of GrepBeat and through our wonderful conversation, was reminded that Grep-a-palooza is coming up on June 1st. It is being held in Raleigh and has a great set of topics and discussion points. We put the link to the entire agenda in the show notes. 

Company Coming Up: I came across a unique and fast growing company out of Decatur this week called Volanto. Founded in 2014,. Volantio frees airlines from the constraints of fixed capacity and they do this through a dynamic platform that moves select customers on popular services to alternate off-peak choices post-booking (with compensation).  This is fully automated self-service process which allows airlines to secure more prime capacity, improved guest satisfaction, all while significantly improving their bottom line. 

Volantio’s customers include 15+ airlines globally..

Volantio was founded by Azim Barodawala and Fenn Bailey and they just raised their Series A last September which includes customer, Alaska Airlines. Impressive progress. 

LinkedIn Post of the Week: I follow several thought leaders whether it’s on LInkedIn or Twitter and every now and then one post just blows me away with its simplicity and timeliness and that happened with a recent post from Seth Radman. Seth is the CTO of Infinite Giving and has built dozens and dozens of products and one of his most recent posts just struck such a wonderful chord was around MVP’s and pushing out a product. He writes:

“If your MVP doesn’t immediately drive word of mouth growth, improving the product won’t help.

Adding more features to something that didn’t get people excited on Day 1 won’t make it better.”

The simplicity in this message makes it resonate so well. If future customers in your market are not getting excited about the value prop of your product, it will never matter that the degree of it’s robustness or functionality. At Atlanta Ventures, we call this authentic demand and it is required for a market – even if it is initially a niche market – to build something successful. Great thought leadership Seth and keep creating. 

Platform Announcement of the Week: FlockSafety, which helped secure a dangerous shooter in Atlanta two weeks ago, announced a major product and really platform evolution in the business. Their 4 major products which includes their license plate reader (LPR), now incorporate the Flock Safety Raven product, their FlockOS product and the FlockSafety Condor. This mix of software around audio, video, and streaming services makes up for their full suite of services to fight crime in communities and I can tell you, as my kid’s school was locked down two weeks ago, I’m very glad these advancements are being made.  

Flock Safety currently serves 3,000 communities across the U.S. The company’s devices and software provide the evidence for police to solve about 7% of reported crime in the U.S.  

Raise a Glass: This week, Eskuad out of the Atlanta Tech Village raised $1.6M led by Outlander VC. Eskuad is a mobile-first data platform built specifically for field operations. You don’t even need wireless access. Their products help you build forms, enter data, manage tasks and teams, with world-class offline function. Customers are saving 20% in operational costs and getting reports delivered 20x faster. Congrats to Eskuad on the round and the future ahead. 

Annnnnd that’s five minutes!

Companies Worth Applying To: SDR’s need at AdPipe, Greenzie, and Copient

Event of the Week: Grep-a-palooza

Company Coming Up: Volantio 

LinkedIn Post of the Week: Seth Radman’s Post

Platform Release of the Week: FlockSafety

Raise a Glass: Eskuad

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