Greg Foster’s Blog

Over the past year or so, I have been working on a new start-up called BrightWhistle with co-founder Chad Mallory.  We have been a bit stealthy, waiting on today’s hard launch to talk more broadly about what we’re doing.  To read more about our story, go to our company blog here.  I am super excited about this new adventure!

Here is the press release regarding the seed round of funding we just closed this morning:

Digital Marketing Startup BrightWhistle Receives Funding to Fuel Development of Customer Acquisition Platform

BrightWhistle Already Generating Results for Health Care Service Providers

ATLANTA – July 26, 2011 – BrightWhistle Inc., a first-in-class online customer and patient acquisition management platform provider, announced today that it has raised $1.1 million in seed funding, led by Atlanta-based Hamilton Ventures.  Eastside Partners and other prominent angel investors also participated in the round. Jamie Hamilton, managing partner, Hamilton Ventures, and Emerson Fann, managing partner, Eastside Partners, will join the company’s board of directors. Former Weather Channel and Disney executive and prominent Atlanta angel investor Paul Iaffaldano will also join the board.

With several health care clients already realizing a significant ROI using the BrightWhistle solution, the company will use this investment to fuel continued growth in the health services sector as well as future expansion into multi-location businesses and marketing agencies. The funding will also help augment the engineering team in order to enhance the company’s platform.

Leveraging premium content from its proprietary network, BrightWhistle’s first-in-class platform enables a digital marketer to build and manage a matrix of location/practitioner sites designed to magnify a company’s online presence.  The same platform powers targeted search and social media ad campaigns designed to attract, target, qualify and convert new patients and customers.

“Current marketing automation tools help manage leads once they’ve entered the pipeline, but marketers continue to face intense pressure to fill the pipeline with new, highly qualified leads that actually convert into new customers,” said Greg Foster, co-founder and CEO, BrightWhistle. “This approach goes well beyond traditional means of acquiring new patients and represents a sea change in how marketers take control of the patient/customer acquisition process.”

Prior to BrightWhistle, Foster served on the management team of three successful start-ups, including Southern Direct, a company he founded and ultimately sold to Turner Broadcasting. He then served as vice president of corporate development at Turner and later as a digital media-focused venture capitalist with Noro-Moseley Partners.  He currently serves as an entrepreneur-in-residence for Chrysalis Ventures.

“At the heart of our approach is a platform capable of generating and managing hyper-localized sites powered by high quality content that educates and informs prospective consumers,” said Chad Mallory, co-founder and CTO, BrightWhistle.  “When combined with our system that scales the targeting and conversion of prospects within search and social media platforms like Facebook, Google and LinkedIn, the complete solution serves as an end-to-end customer acquisition system.”  Prior to BrightWhistle, Mallory was co-founder and CTO of Nexteppe, a company designed to serve the lead generation needs of the automotive marketplace.

“BrightWhistle’s pioneering approach to automating the online customer acquisition process combined with the business, technology and marketing expertise of the founders sets BrightWhistle apart from other digital marketing and advertising vendors,” said Jamie Hamilton, managing partner, Hamilton Ventures. “Hamilton Ventures is excited to be a part of a venture that is already impacting the way health care service providers are finding new patients.”

About BrightWhistle Inc.

Established in 2010, BrightWhistle drives new business for health care service providers, multi-location businesses and marketing agencies. By integrating PPC Ad Management, a digital matrix of branded websites and quality content, BrightWhistle’s first-in-class online customer and patient acquisition management platform increases new customer count while decreasing acquisition costs. BrightWhistle, one of the few companies with official access to the Facebook Ads API, has been named one of the Top 40 Innovative Companies in Georgia for 2011 by the Technology Association of Georgia. BrightWhistle is based in Atlanta, Ga. and can be found at brightwhistle.com.

About Hamilton Ventures

Hamilton Ventures, LLC is a privately held investment company actively engaged in making investments on behalf of its principals and its co-investment partners, with a focus on providing expansion capital to rapidly growing companies. Hamilton Ventures provides investment services exclusively to the Hamilton Ventures sponsored investments. Among the services provided are identification of investment opportunities, evaluation of prospective investments for conformance with portfolio objectives, negotiation and consummation of transactions and ongoing asset management.

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Media Contact:

Name:  Shannon Rentner

Phone:  404-931-2242

Email:  shannon@brightwhistle.com

Stay tuned…

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I’m sure you’re wondering why the heck I am writing about a move in the corporate media space.  Well, in this case, I happen to have history with one of the principal players.  I was excited, late last week, to see the announcement that Mark Lazarus was taking over from Dick Ebersol as the new President of the NBC Sports Cable Group.  This will be a insanely difficult task - to take over for someone as beloved as Dick Ebersol (if you saw Bob Costas’ emotional speech after the Preakness, you know what I mean).  The task is made more difficult by the timing of NBC’s bid to renew their contract for the Olympic Games.  Those pitches happen this Summer and already, some folks are predicting that, because of Ebersol’s departure and the timing of the departure, the 2014 and 2016 Games will be on either Fox or ESPN.  Clearly these people have never worked with Mark Lazarus.  Let me just say that I am clearly biased in my POV on Mark and what I believe will be an incredible run for NBC Sports under his leadership - he led the strategic investment and ultimate acquisition of my company, Southern Direct, back in 2003 and 2005 respectively.  But I also got a chance to work with him closely for three years after joining Turner when I ran Corporate Development for the company.  I can truthfully say that he is the most talented, the most ethical, the most effective corporate media executive I have ever encountered.  Moreover, he’s one of the most forward looking media executives with whom I have ever worked.  He was my group’s most active internal client, pushing us to work on deals that furthered Turner Entertainment’s digital strategy.  For example, it was his leadership that pushed our investment in Atlanta based Vitrue.

The torch at NBC Sports has been passed to some very capable hands - great for NBC, Comcast, and all us sports fans out there.

Stay tuned…

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There will be much discussion among the Atlanta Twitterati today regarding the announcement that Lance Weatherby has joined HalfOff Depot in conjunction with the company raising a large round of capital led by Noro-Moseley’s Alan Taetle.  It’s always more fun to talk about what people are going to do vs. talking about what people have done - in the interest of making certain that the history of Lance’s efforts as a Venture Catalyst at ATDC isn’t lost in the fray, I thought I would quickly blog about him and his awesomeness.

Not sure who wrote the original job description for “Venture Catalyst” when ATDC invented the position years ago, but I gotta believe that Lance embodies what they intended to create - someone who combines the right levels of experience, skill, optimism, unselfishness, and humility required to advise early stage start-ups… someone who can walk into a room with a serial entrepreneur and get them thinking about things they’ve never thought about before and can turn around and talk to a 22 year old first time CEO and help educate them on how the start-up world works.  That’s Lance, and that’s why he’s universally appreciated and revered.

When you’re sitting in an office at ATDC, life can sometimes be a bit more like a dorm room than an office building.  People feel free to just waltz right through your door, unannounced, regardless of what you’re doing and what you might have had planned for that time slot in your day.  I can honestly say that I never once regretted having Lance interrupt something we were doing.  It was always an opportunity to have a real discussion with someone genuinely interested in helping us out.  And no matter how many previous discussion topics we might have had with Lance, he remembered them all, had thought about them, and followed up on them with added insight.

When younger entrepreneurs ask me about the best way to gauge those folks in the start-up ecosystem to interface with respect to their ability and willingness to help, I always send them to Lance first.  I figure they might as well start with the top of the heap and use that as a standard against which they can compare other potential advisors.  That’s how much I respect him.

And one last thing (and sorry for the Faulkneresque stream of consciousness here, but I do need to get back to running BrightWhistle) - I know of no other person in the start-up community who has given of himself so unselfishly and has rarely ever gotten anything tangible back in return.  I even know of a few folks who have taken advantage of Lance’s willingness to help and have never even attempted to pay him back in any form, tangible or otherwise.  You know who you are and karma will not be kind to you <grin>.

So, that’s it for the lovefest.  The BrightWhistle team is thrilled for our friend but we’re also kinda sad that we won’t get nearly as many of those welcome interruptions to our day.  Best wishes to you, Lance - we will be rooting for you and for your team at HalfOff Depot!

Stay tuned…

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Part 3 in my series on start-ups with which I am working closely brings us to SolidFire. Dave Wright, the company’s founder and CEO, is, arguably, the most promising hard technology entrepreneur in the city. When I say “hard technology”, I am talking about systems, platforms, etc that generally require hardware to work. So what are these guys doing? Dave has essentially built an architecture to manage solid state storage in a way that removes the cost barriers associated with using this kind of system. The system also makes it possible for the creation of cost effective solid state storage “in the cloud”. Solid state storage has traditionally been used for higher performance applications – it has always brought significant advantages with respect to performance, footprint, durability, energy consumption, etc. It has also brought with it a price tag that has essentially made it an unacceptable alternative to traditional spinning disk storage for basic applications. SolidFire is going to fix that.

So, why is SolidFire going to win?

1. The Entrepreneur – I have had the good fortune of knowing Dave for nearly as long as he’s been in Atlanta. His intelligence is completely off the chart. Like scary smart. Seriously. And that intelligence is broad – and this is a lesson to would be entrepreneurs – he isn’t just smart about building cool stuff that is hard to build. He does it in the context of a market need. This is an aspect of his intelligence he shares with Chris Klaus here in town. He also has the real skills to build each facet of what he has designed – what do I mean by that? When I first talked to him about this idea and he explained to me how he was doing early testing, I said to him – “So, Dave, I have a vision in my head of a bunch of empty Radio Shack bags on your kitchen table along side a smoking soldering iron. Is that about right?”. He nodded his head. He knows storage cold – he built JungleDisk from scratch (competitor to Carbonite and Mozy) and it was the first consumer storage app built atop Amazon S3. He knows the deep complexity of how all that works – huge advantage as he builds this system.
2. A Problem worth Solving – I love solutions that carry a sales question like this “what if you could get better performance, smaller footprint, higher durability and lower energy consumption in my solution than you could get with the other guy’s solution, all for the same price?” Yeah, that sales approach works really, really well.
3. Passion – If you know Dave, you know he is pretty darn cerebral. That isn’t to say, though, that he doesn’t sit on the edge of his seat when he starts to talk about certain things. When he starts to talk about this idea, he is on the razor’s edge of his seat. It’s almost like the incredibly large CPU in his brain can’t quite process the marriage of understanding and excitement that it’s trying to combine into words. He loves this stuff.
4. His Ecosystem and Market – Storage is hot and he has assembled a great investment team (Novak Biddle and Valhalla) and other folks around him who know how the market works and know how to position his solution. This team is only going to get larger and more helpful.

I am really honored to have a small piece of the company and to have played a tiny role in helping Dave get going. I believe strongly that SolidFire has a real chance to be one of the best start-up stories in Atlanta since ISS. Yeah, I said it.

Stay tuned…

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Today, the world of sports media changes forever. Today, StatSheet launches the first and largest network of content sites powered exclusively via an automated publishing platform. Let me explain in the simplest terms possible – every one of the 345 sites StatSheet launches today (one for every D-1 college basketball team) will provide previews, recaps, injury updates and a ton of additional article types with narrative automatically – no human intervention. Stats come into the black box, are affiliated with over 500 million historical stats and out comes long form narrative and insightful analysis – in real time, automatically. Did I say no human intervention?

Forget the myriad of sports blog networks out there (not going to mention them by name, you know the ones of which I speak)… they use the old, out dated, hard to scale model of paying bloggers to cover teams. Hundreds of bloggers, millions of dollars in cost per year on personnel alone. StatSheet raised a little more than $1 million and as of today, they now have the largest sports blog network out there.

Yeah – this is a bit braggy. I own a part of the company, I sit on the company’s board. I tweet about the company incessantly… I just know a revolution when I see one, and this, my friends, marks the first shot in that revolution.

Stay tuned…

P.S.  Here is the full text of the press release that hit the wire this morning…

STATSHEET LAUNCHES REVOLUTIONARY SPORTS CONTENT NETWORK

-Advanced automated publishing system will power 345 college basketball sites offering the most in-depth analysis available for every fan in the country-

(DURHAM, N.C., November 12, 2010) – StatSheet, a first-in-class sports media company, announced today the launch of its inaugural network of sites powered exclusively by the company’s unique automated publishing engine. The network debuts with 345 sites that provide in-depth coverage for every Division I college basketball program in the nation and represents the world’s first network of websites driven entirely by high quality, automated content.

The StatSheet network will leverage both real-time sports statistics as well as a proprietary database of over 500 million statistics to generate a level of in-depth analysis and insight on every team, every player, every coach and every game unmatched by any large media website.

“Today marks a sea change in the way sports analysis and insight is provided to fans,” said StatSheet Founder and CEO Robbie Allen. “Our technology platform generates content automatically in real-time – the result is a game changing alternative to the current model of sports reporting which is expensive, inefficient and, in many ways, exclusive in that only top teams receive quality coverage.”

Every College Hoops Fan in the Country Will Have Access to Premium Team Coverage

Traditionally, sports news has been driven by a few big-name reporters covering the top-ranked teams. Now fans of big schools or small schools, conference powerhouses or tournament hopefuls will have access to the best available coverage of their team.

Each site will include data driven insights and compelling narratives, as well as photo and video highlights. In addition, each site will be accompanied by its own Twitter account, Facebook fan page and mobile application.

Previews, recaps, and over 20 additional article categories are created as soon as the underlying data is generated, so that fans are able to get the analysis they want when they want it. While other sports media companies tout their coverage of local sports teams, StatSheet provides maximum coverage of every team, regardless of the size of the team’s fan base or surrounding local population.

“Our goal is to combine insightful content with the most comprehensive statistical analysis available on the web to deliver a fan experience currently not offered anywhere else,” said Allen. “Now, fans accessing CardinalsDaily.com, which is StatSheet’s site covering Lamar University basketball, will get the same great experience as those following CarolinaUpdate.com, StatSheet’s site covering UNC basketball.”

To learn more, visit http://StatSheet.com.

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Part 2 in my series on start-ups with which I am working closely brings us to PlayOn Sports. This is a company incubated within the confines of Turner Broadcasting. The business was the brainchild of former Turner executive, David Rudolph. He left Turner specifically to spin the business out and get it on a growth trajectory. The company is focused on building the premiere source for high school sports. They are building a media company, top to bottom.

So, why is PlayOn Sports going to win?

1. The Approach – unlike so many mom and pop type operations in the high school media space, the PlayOn team is applying an old-new hybrid approach to building their business. This means respecting the current media landscape… how it operates, how money flows, etc. while also embracing new media techniques and technology. For example, as other smaller players are simply focused on providing streaming for high school games here and there and getting paid production fees or in other ways that don’t scale, PlayOn has struck licensing deals to secure exclusive rights to content in nearly a dozen states. This allows them to talk with traditional cable and IPTV operators willing to pay for access to large amounts of focused sports content.
2. Technology – rarely does technology alone win in the end, but PlayOn has applied the right level of technology that a) allows them to scale and b) allows an end user to produce content easily which then serves, again, the scale issue. It means they can supply the technology all the way down to the school level and have near zero cost to turn those schools on and have them producing content into PlayOn’s network.
3. Great Execution – building a business ahead of the curve takes a lot of grit and heart. It also takes a lot of work as you build up to that point when you have critical mass – in this case, critical mass of distribution, content, and brand recognition among those that matter. You have to execute nearly flawlessly… and they’ve done that.
4. Desire to Be Number 1 – what did Ricky Bobby say in Talladega Nights? “If you’re not first, you’re last”. These guys assume that there will only be one company in this space that will be the clear winner. That means they run fast and they take nothing for granted. The reality is, there is nobody bigger in the high school space, but they come in everyday assuming there is or that there will be soon. That attitude forces an aggressive laser focus, a necessary ingredient in any successful start-up…

Stay tuned…

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Once I’ve gotten involved with a company, I become a fierce advocate. It’s not unlike, I guess, my blind support for Georgia Tech, the Falcons, the Braves, the Hawks. And so, with that understood, I begin a series on my blog about the companies I am deeply involved with. I think they are all going to win – if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be involved with them. These are start-ups or high growth companies that I advise in some capacity. In some cases, like in the case of StatSheet, which I will write about here, I am an active board member. In some cases, I am an advisory board member, or simply a friend and cheerleader.

So, why is StatSheet going to win?

1. The Entrepreneur – Robbie Allen personifies all the great qualities of a winning entrepreneur. He isn’t just a great technologist. He is a brilliant thinker – and he thinks with his whole brain, proud of both his right and left brain contributions to the product he’s building. I can’t reveal too much about what he’s building, but suffice it say that it is a revolutionary approach to building relevant, fan-centric sports content.
2. A Problem worth Solving – The network of sites that StatSheet is building solves two important problems – one on the user side, by providing insight the passionate fan will find nowhere else, and the other on the business model side, by inventing a new way by which real content is created and monetized that reflects the changing economics of IP delivered content.
3. Passion – if you find yourself in Durham, shoot over to 4601 Creekstone Dr and pay a visit to StatSheet HQ. The office is a reflection of Robbie’s passion, deep passion, for sports. He’s a beneficiary of his own invention, and the excitement around the company is palpable. Don’t be surprised if he challenges you to a ping-pong match (he keeps the records of everyone in the office up on a hall of fame/shame board) or a lively game of DOG, his abridged version of HORSE.
4. His Ecosystem – Robbie has assembled an incredible team of advisors and investors. Some entrepreneurs worry from day one about dilution and having too many cooks in the kitchen, etc. Robbie subscribes to the idea that you can’t get enough smart people around an idea. That requires modesty and self-confidence, both of which Robbie possesses in abundance.
5. Competitive Spirit – building a business that ultimately has to take on well established players (big media) and overyhyped start-ups (I won’t call anyone out) requires a large measure of “I’m going to beat you into the ground” thinking. Add to that the fact that this is a sports related venture, and it’s pretty clear how important a competitive spirit can be to ultimate success. StatSheet possesses this in abundance, too.

All of these great things have to measure up to the innumerable challenges any start-up faces, but my money is on StatSheet to ultimately be a big winner.

Stay tuned…

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I used to keep a box at my desk with all of the nametags I had accumulated from countless conferences and networking events I had attended through the years. A few weeks ago, as I was purging my desk of all things extraneous, I sifted through those badges and noticed a trend – it occurred to me that for about a 10 year stretch, I had attended events that were roughly the same format and had roughly the same crowd year after year after year. If I had the time to go back and look at the various agenda for each of these events, I’m pretty sure I would have seen the same names over and over again. It got me thinking – what’s the goal of all these networking events in Atlanta? Is it to network with new people or is it something else?

The city of Atlanta has everything going for it – you’ve heard me talk about, I’ve blogged about it many times. I’m not going to reiterate all the good things we have in place. But if we’re going to take that next step in our maturation as a city with an ambition to be on the start-up map, I think we have some introspection to do. And make no mistake, I am looking straight in the mirror as I write all this. And so on with the introspection. I would contend that many (not all, mind you) of our networking events are essentially club events. The same core group of people show up, catch up with one another, fail to make any real effort to get to know new people, revel in their respective importance, and rarely invite (or ask organizers to invite) new people. If we’re going to grow our base of smart, talented high growth minded people, this is a recipe for mediocrity, for stagnancy, not for growth. These events are awesome opportunities for our community to be truly inclusive and too often, we treat them like organized social hour for a small elite group. Too often, we seek out ways to exclude. Are there times when requirements for attendance are important? Events where service providers should be excluded? Of course – especially ones in which start-ups are vying for limited attention from potential investors. I won’t list them out because I will leave something out, but you know what they are. For everything else, I wish the bar to qualify for attendance was a bit lower.

So some of you are thinking right now – come on, I don’t exclude people. Heck, when we have an event, we tweet about it, make sure folks know it’s an open invitation, etc. What I would say is the same thing any good church minister would say – the marquee sign in front of the sanctuary has limited real marketing value. Event organizers need to do more direct evangelizing. They need to encourage folks to bring new friends to events. They need to break down any historical exclusive requirements. That’s how growth happens – we should be opting for democratization at the very least, active inclusion and sought out diversity as the ideal.

Atlanta gets a bad rap for a lot of stuff, so much of it undeserved. We have all the necessary elements for success that are not easily replicated – amazing companies, amazing universities, a young, vibrant labor force, great weather, the biggest airport in the world, the list goes on. But if we’re honest with ourselves, we could probably do a better job of embracing our larger community. Every strong community develops its own set of characteristics that define it, set it apart. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s when those characteristics ultimately contribute nothing to either the group itself or the community at large that we all lose.

Alright, stepping off the preachy soap box atop the high horse. I think you get my point…

Stay tuned…

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You may have seen the Atlanta Business Chronicle story this morning about my new EIR affiliation with Chrysalis Ventures. I have gotten a bunch of emails and DMs this morning about this announcement and given that this affiliation is part of my larger portfolio effort to identify my next full time career move, I thought this would be a great opportunity to provide a better understanding of what I will be doing with Chrysalis and what an EIR affiliation is all about. In a subsequent post, I am going to talk about how I have applied this portfolio approach to this phase of my career and I will highlight some of the cool start-ups I am working with. I think there are some interesting takeaways that might be helpful to others in the market looking for their next thing.

So here are some FAQs around my relationship as an EIR with Chrysalis Ventures:

1. What is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR)? This position is also sometimes called an “Executive-in-Residence”. The position is typically a somewhat informal affiliation with a VC in which both the VC and EIR work together to review deals that are a “fit” with both the VC’s areas of focus and the EIR’s interest and expertise. The goal is to find a company that a) needs funding and b) could benefit from the leadership the EIR can provide, typically at the CEO level. In the interim, the VC benefits from the EIR’s expertise in a particular field and the EIR benefits from the larger volume of deal flow that the VC is seeing at any time. In some cases, an EIR can build a de novo business plan which the VC funds.
2. Does that describe your relationship with Chrysalis? Yes. As I continue to search for my next full time opportunity, this affiliation provides me with a much larger lens through which to review opportunities. The team there has made some great technology investments over the years and have a specific focus on digital media (along with a big focus in health care). They share my belief that Atlanta (and the Southeast) is a great place to build a company, and they also happen to be really great people for whom I have a tremendous amount of respect. I am proud to be associated with them.
3. Is this a full time gig? Does this relationship preclude you from doing other stuff? No, it’s not and no, it doesn’t. In fact, I’m encouraged to continue working with the start-ups I am advising. I will remain on boards and advisory boards. I am also continuing to do consulting. This arrangement allows me to look at a lot more opportunities. And one more thing, I am using this career transition to look at all kinds of opportunities – not just “CEO of a start-up” opportunities. This position is part of a portfolio approach to identifying my next full time gig.
4. Are you going to help Chrysalis identify investment opportunities outside of your personal interests? Yes. Part of my responsibility is to help them look at deals in Atlanta – that means indentifying and teeing up promising companies even if, at first blush, I don’t think the company is a fit for my skills (or is in need of my skills).

So, hope this clarifies the role I’ve taken with Chrysalis. This should make more sense in the context of my other activities which I will expound upon in a subsequent post.

Stay tuned…

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