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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.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day. Y’all I record these on Wednesday or Thursday of each week and we obviously release them on Friday morning. I can’t even begin to describe how much can change in a week or even a day. An entire 4 season Netflix documentary will be created from that last time I pressed record to today regarding SVB, all of its deposits, and the frantic nature of the past 7 days. But alas, the greatest entrepreneurs focus on what they can control including where they keep their money, but also building product and going to market. That is a long winded way of saying we have several thoughts on the SVB and Signature Bank situations but we’re going to stay focused on the companies, entrepreneurs, and new products in the Southeast.
Alpha Product of the Week: Adam Bloomston who started Payscape now PayRoc with Jeremy Wing is starting to build his next company. Here is the problem he’s solving: as an avid fisherman, he loves to head up to North Georgia, North Carolina, you name it, to fish. He has his select guides he’ll text asking the best places to fish. He’s experienced enough where he doesn’t need a full guide but also feels guilty because he wants to pay the guides for their unique insight into the local geography. Enter FishTips. The sole marketplace to connect with local guides to get the most up-to-date information on where to fish. The alpha version was just launched this week and guides across the country are using it to connect with consumers to share information for money. The guides love it because they get compensated quickly and consumers enjoy it because they get vital fishing information without asking favors or paying for an entire guide for the day. If you want to see what an alpha version looks like with a small but passionate set of users, go to FishTips.com now. And of course, if you fish, give it a try today!
Event of the Week: Students who listen to this pod, put on your calendar Wednesday, March 29th at the Atlanta Tech Village we have our annual Startup Student Connection. This is a job and intern fair where dozens of startups have a booth to showcase their company. Students from all over the city and region can meet and greet, within a span of a few hours, several companies hiring and looking for talent. It starts at 4:30 p.m. and goes until 7:30 p.m. This is a wonderful opportunity to connect with many companies at once.
Product of the Week: Product of the Week comes from Hazlnut out of Jacksonville. We covered them when they launched this product but now we’re following up sharing some of their success. They have landed some major customers with their new product called Hazlvoice. Hazlvoice software that solves the problem of the unanswered phone call in restaurants, which 33% of calls to quick-serve restaurants do not get answered. If a restaurant doesn’t pick up the phone, now there is an option to have the menu texted to the consumer to limit the number of missed orders. Keep an eye on this service and company as they scale.
Metric of the Week: Discipline around metrics has been a recurring theme throughout 2022 and especially in 2023. One that has been getting lots of attention is the burn multiple. This metric is for companies out there who are burning money or spending more than they are currently making so they can grow faster. The Burn Multiple takes however much money you are burning or projected to burn that year and divides it by your net new ARR. This number includes all the new ARR from the year, including expansion revenue and churn. For example, if you’re burning $10M a year and bringing in $5M in net new revenue, your burn multiple is 2x. If you’re burning $10M to get to $6.5M in net new revenue, your burn multiple is approximately 1.5x. If you’re burning $10M to bring in $20M of net new revenue, your burn multiple is .5x. If your burn multiple is greater than 3x, that is not good. Anything under 1 is amazing. Anything in between should be analyzed at greater depths by you and your strategic advisors. 2023 is the year of financial discipline and understanding one’s burn metric is a great start.
Annnnnnnd that’s 5 minutes!
Alpha Product of the Week: FishTips
Event of the Week: Startup Student Connection
Product of the Week: Hazlnut’s HazlVoice
Metric of the Week: Burn Multiple Metric
