YnR North A Success!

May 9th, 2007 • Entrepreneurship + Startups, Venture Capital

Tonight we had our first YnR event in the northern part of Atlanta. For those who haven’t been following along, YnR (Young and Restless) events were started by David Ratajczak to get entrepreneurs in Atlanta together. They’ve become a smashing success because David has been great at keeping the service providers out of the events. We all heard some grumblings about having the events more north so people who are OTP (outside the perimeter) could participate without having to suffer Atlanta traffic. So tonight, we held our first YnR North event. We had a decent turnout (I counted about 15 people tonight with a fair number who had been at previous YnR gatherings in town) which was pretty promising. We’re hoping to alternate between events in town and at the north end of town so as to give folks a chance to participate. Times and locations are never published so as to keep the riff-raff out.

Speaking of the types of folks who attend these, I found it pretty interesting that basically everyone there tonight was an entrepreneur. There was not even a hint of an angel investor or venture capitalist at the event tonight. I’m not sure if David considers these folks “service providers”, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t. A lot of folks have talked about what is wrong with investors in Atlanta but this event illustrates the issue - if you don’t want to be involved in the community, how would we know that you are investing in the community?

At least this lack of investor presence gave a number of us a chance to openly dish on investors and discuss what we think is wrong with the folks here. So that was a positive result in the end.

P.S. Yes, Jeff, I know it was technically ITP but still, at least it was on the north end. :-)

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