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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Blog Post of the Week: ‍

This week’s blog post of the week focuses on serial entrepreneurs Landon Bennett and Kyle Connaro. In the world of headlines highlighting money raised and strategic acquisition, there’s also a quieter, more subtle path to entrepreneurship, especially in Atlanta and the Southeast where the cost of living is a touch lower than some other places in the world. One of my favorite communities online is called IndieHackers and they wrote a post highlighting how Landon and Kyle operate 4 startups at once. Clearly these guys love the early stages of company building. An insight from the post states how Landon and Kyle get each company to a place where they can put systems and operations around the business, freeing them up to start another one. Read more about how they are laying the foundation to a multi-SaaS portfolio of starting companies. 

Announcement of the Week: 

Resurgens Technology Partners made a substantial announcement about closing their second fund with $500M of committed capital. This is quite the news for Atlanta and the region as more capital comes in to fund growth stage startups. I spoke with one of the team members and asked specifically what they are looking for: their ideal company to add strategic capital ranges from $5-$30m of ARR that are growing 10-40% year over year with strong unit economics and a capital efficient business. Well done to the Resurgens team for bringing more capital into the region. 

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Company Company Up:

Infinite Giving is the company coming up. They just presented this past week at Atlanta Startup Convos and Karen and Seth are building a world class product. Infinite Giving is the first robo advisor that allows entity investing. If you took all the assets within non-profits and added them up, they would be the 5th largest economy in the world, but after non-profits do all the hard work of raising money, now they have the tough task of managing it. Today, several non-profits are not big enough to warrant attention from institutional investors and the ones that do pay high fees and have manual and painful processes to ensure risk-adjusted, quality returns. Infinite Giving makes it simple for non-profits to invest their capital by first providing the ease to open a brokerage account in minutes while offering a wide variety of options to allocate money and more. Be on the look for Infinite Giving in the week, months, and years ahead!     

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Event of the Week:

‍This event of the week is for all the folks looking to do something tonight. Starting a 5:30 p.m. this Thursday evening is the final leg of the ATL Unlocked circuit which traversed throughout the Metro Atlanta area. This one is hosted in Peachtree Corners at Atlanta Tech Park. This entire program put on by MAC and all the hubs has been a strong success as I’ve learned about new companies and met new people going to two of them. Link to RSVP in the shownotes. 

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Beta Products of the Week: 

What started out as a Georgia Tech Capstone project has now transformed into a company whose mission is ​​to bring simple and affordable wearable technology into physical therapy clinics. This company is called Stride Link and their first product identifies, highlights, and collects data on consumer’s walk or gait and delivers it back to the physical therapist so they are more educated and equipped to solve the patient’s need. These entrepreneurs continue to innovate and be on the lookout for refined product offerings.  

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Raise a Glass:

Luke Beard and Daniel Kuntz just announced their $1.5M round for AnyDistance which we highlighted before on the pod. AnyDistance is the most elegant, safe, and shareable activity app. Luke and Dan’s vision includes incorporating real world accomplishments into digital achievements that can be exchanged for anything from swag, to clothing, to coffee. The future is bright at AnyDistance and the list of investors is impressive as well including Overline and Shorewind. Congrats to all involved!  

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 Annnnd, that’s 5 minutes.

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Thank you for listening to Five and Thrive. We provide 5 minutes of quality information, so you can thrive in the upcoming week. Please subscribe to the show and spread the good word! 

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Resources discussed in this episode:

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Blog Post of the Week: 

Landon Bennett - Serial Entrepreneur

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Announcement of the Week:

Resurgen’s Technology Partners Raises $500M

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Company Coming Up: 

Infinite Giving

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Events to Put on your Calendar: 

ATL Unlocked - Peachtree Corners

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Beta Product of the Week:

Stride Link

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Raise a Glass:

Any Distance

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