Ask someone to name the biggest problem with doing business in Atlanta, and they don't hesitate: traffic.
'For a lot of people, that is a huge challenge for attracting talent,' says Mike Landman, president of Entrepreneurs' Organization Atlanta and CEO of Ripple, an IT company. 'We're in many ways envious of a New York City or Boston or places where there are legitimate pubic transportation systems.'
The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority runs trains and busses through the city, linking the airport with outlying areas such as Sandy Spring, but the system is far from comprehensive enough to replace automobiles. 'It can make it prohibitive for people to see face to face,' says Blake.
New businesses have to take things like parking and nighttime safety into account. A coffee shop in another city may be able to survive on foot traffic, but Riffel said Octane has to balance business from students and nearby offices during the week and draw crowds by acting as a bar at night. 'Atlanta is just such a driving city, there aren't many walkable areas,' he says.
Rathbun and other high-end restaurants say offering valet parking is a must: "It's not like New York where you get in a cab and go somewhere."
Some companies try a different approach to work around accessibility issues. Landman's Ripple is one of the companies that adopted a 'results-only' work environment, allowing employees flexible schedules so they can work from home or avoid rush hours. 'Here in Atlanta that's a huge benefit because the whole driving to work thing is a big deal for people,' he said
Dig Deeper: Beyond Flextime
Starting a Business in Atlanta: Recreating Urban Community
Meetups, peer groups and social networking circles have boomed in Atlanta, as business owners have tried to compress the physical sprawl and recreate the dense collegiality of bigger cities. Co-working spaces and shared office arrangements are popular.
Mike Schinkel had early success with Xtras, a mail-order software company he founded in the 90s. But even with $12 million in revenue and 30 employees, he felt isolated in the Atlanta tech scene. So, in 2007, he founded Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs, a group working through the site Meetup.com where people talk about new products and share advice.
'I kind of put myself out there to help others with what I had learned,' he says. 'I felt like I wasn't getting much help from anybody.'
As of this spring, Atlanta was the fifth most active city in the world on Twitter, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Only London, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York had more active Twitterers.
'Eight years ago, when I moved here, (the technology scene) was pretty non-existent,' says Cummings, of Pardot. 'It's amazing how the advent of social media has enabled a lot of people who didn't connect before to connect in a more passive way. Those passive connections turned into more active connections with meetups and other things.'
Groups such as StartupLounge, Startup Riot, Youth Entrepreneurs of Atlanta and StartupChicks connect like-minded people and share ideas. Meetup.com groups have evolved from broad categories to specific business topics over the past five years, said Foster, the venture capitalist.
'If you're a start-up, you really want to get invited to that, get in the door,' he says. 'It kind of fosters that ever more with the lack of urban normal density. It's the equivalent of kind of bumping into someone, which might happen in New York, but wouldn't happen here. '
Dig Deeper: Going Beyond Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter
