I caught up with a friend who’s working for an investment firm in New York City. In a wide-ranging conversation, we compared housing and transportation costs in New York and surrounding cities with those in Atlanta. New York is one of the top real estate markets in the world, which factored into my expectations, but what my friend shared today surprised me (especially regarding transportation). The cost of housing in the areas he frequents is still rising significantly, as is the cost of commuting into, around, and out of the city.

It’s one conversation with one friend—anecdotal for sure. But it reminded me how attractive Atlanta is from the perspectives of affordability and quality of life. And this is after the city has experienced some of the worst inflation in the nation.

I recently attended a social gathering where I met someone working in tech who moved to Atlanta within the last eighteen months. He’s a native of New York City but most recently lived in Los Angeles. Before that he lived in Austin. He has an interesting baseline, so I was curious to get his candid thoughts on Atlanta so far.

Overall, he likes Atlanta. The climate is nice. The cost of living isn’t a steal (anymore), but it’s reasonable. The people are nice. The biggest downside, in comparison to Los Angeles and New York, has to do with the variety of social activities. I wasn’t expecting this, so I was interested to hear more.

In Los Angeles and New York there are several parts of town to explore, each with its own set of social activities. The options are well known, regularly explored, and openly discussed. Having a social life with tons of variety is easy. If you make the effort to leave the house, you know of many interesting things you can do.

He doesn’t feel the same way about Atlanta. A few parts of town are known for being entertainment venues, such as Buckhead, West Midtown, and O4W, and he’s aware of them, but he doesn’t feel the city offers as much social variety.

As we chatted, I shared with him some other parts of town and things to do. He had no idea some of them existed. I said that Atlanta may not have as much to do as New York or Los Angeles, but Atlanta does offer a healthy variety of desirable social activities in various parts of town. However, the awareness that people have of them, and their discoverability, are highly variable.

Atlanta is influenced heavily by homophily (the tendency for contact between similar people to occur at a higher rate than among dissimilar people). People who have a lot in common interact with each other frequently. People who don’t have anything in common interact infrequently or not at all. Of course, frequency of interaction is what defines a person’s social circle.

One of many ramifications of this is that information becomes localized in a social circle. The infrequent or nonexistent interaction among people who lack commonalities means that information doesn’t leave certain circles. In the case of social activities, people outside a social circle don’t know certain activities (or even parts of town) exist and therefore don’t participate. Said differently, people’s awareness of desirable social options varies drastically depending on whom they interact with frequently. People living in the same city end up having vastly different awareness of the social experiences available to them.

Homophily is a basic human principle. It isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. The key to maximizing social variety in Atlanta is acknowledging homophily’s heavy influence and trying to interact more often with people you have less in common with. This will help you get access to information that’s localized in circles you’re not part of about fun things to do in different parts of town. Obviously, this is easier said than done, but I believe it’s worth the effort because it helps you experience all Atlanta has to offer socially.

Happy July 4th!

I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday!

I’m a big fan of communities. I recently had a conversation with someone about them and was asked what’s been most valuable to me about the communities I’ve been a part of. After reflection, here’s my answer:

Connecting with people trying to solve the same problems I’m trying to solve.

Being around people who have similar interests is okay. But being around people actively trying to solve for the same thing I am is when I’ve received the most from communities and contributed the most to them. In my experience, sharing and learning from one another builds deeper connections.

Communities of people actively trying to solve the same problem have the most passionate members because those members receive immense value from being part of those communities.

I caught up recently with a friend, an accomplished executive who’s worked for several Fortune 500 companies. He and his family have had to move a few times for these opportunities. He and his wife have always loved Atlanta, and they made their way back a few years ago. A new opportunity is bringing change to their lives again. He just accepted a leadership position for a company headquartered in a western state, where the job requires him to work. For now, he’ll live and work out west, his wife and children will stay in Atlanta, and he’ll come back every few weeks. They’ll make more definitive plans after he settles into the new role and the children finish the school year.

My friend has built an amazing life in Atlanta for his family and himself. He’s hesitant to uproot his family and take them away from the community and city they’ve come to love. I don’t know what my friend and his wife will decide, but I’m sure they’ll make the decision that’s best for their family.

Talking to him highlighted a change I’ve noticed. Companies used to attract talent to a location convenient to the company, which could have a big impact on the personal lives of the employee and their family. It was accepted that sometimes you must move for professional opportunities. In other words, people accepted making their personal lives fit into parameters set by their professions.

How people evaluate opportunities is changing. This is anecdotal, but I’m hearing more people evaluate opportunities differently. They’re looking at how a professional opportunity fits into their personal life, not the other way around. People are more hesitant to move or agree to opportunities that don’t align with their personal lives.

I’m wondering if this is just among the people I know or if it’s happening more broadly (as I suspect). I’m also curious about whether this is a trend that will endure regardless of the economic environment.

For early-stage founders, achieving product–market fit is an important hurdle. Iterating on a solution until it creates enough value for customers to be happy to pay for it isn’t easy, but for a successful company, it’s necessary.

In a world where people are more distributed, I’m a big fan of early-stage founders creating communities around the problem they’re solving. Bringing people with similar interests together can create value for all of them.

For the start-up, building a community early is a great way to accelerate reaching product–market fit. Early community members don’t need to be customers or users. They just need to have an interest in the problem being solved. Passionate community members can provide valuable insights on the problem that help founders understand what solution to build. Engaged community members with whom founders build a rapport are more likely to try a new product and provide honest feedback on how to make it better. All of this can help founders develop a superior solution sooner.

For community members, being around others with similar interests makes them feel connected and understood. The community has lots of benefits for members. One is the free flow of information and knowledge, which is valuable because it can lead to outcomes that otherwise wouldn’t happen, such as job opportunities.

Communities are powerful and can be cost-effective. Start-ups should consider whether it makes sense to create or become active in a community for their space.

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone had a great holiday!

Today I caught up with an aspiring founder. He’s been working as an engineer for a growth-stage start-up for the last four years. He’s fully vested and thinking about starting his own company. I always like to understand people’s journey, so I asked about his—specifically, about choosing to get his master’s in computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon.

He told me he didn’t even know what Carnegie Mellon was and ended up at the school by chance. He joined the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) as an undergrad and attended their conference. During the conference, he got what he thought was a spam email about Carnegie Mellon and its master’s program. Having never heard of the school, he asked an advisor about it. He learned it was one of the top engineering schools in the country. He decided to stop by the Carnegie Mellon booth to learn more. Talking with the admissions staff, he learned that he perfectly matched the profile they were looking for and that the master’s program was a perfect match for what he was looking for. He was basically admitted on the spot. He accepted and excelled in that program . . . and the rest is history.

Matching is critical at the earliest stages of entrepreneurship and your career. The right conversation can literally change your life trajectory. You must be in the right networks for matching with the right people and resources to occur. This engineer was under-networked and didn’t know what he didn’t know. He didn’t even know that Carnegie Mellon existed, let alone that he should apply. Carnegie Mellon didn’t know he existed, so it couldn’t recruit him. The NSBE was the conduit that allowed him to be matched to Carnegie Mellon. The NSBE played the critical role of finding this engineer by meeting him in his existing network/community. It then connected him with people, companies, and schools in other networks he wasn’t aware of.

This engineer is smart and scrappy, and he has a chip on his shoulder. He’s what I call a high-potential, nonobvious founder (or he will be, when he starts his company). These are the kind of founders I like to bet on. Nothing was handed to them. They earned everything they have by climbing mountains. They’re a little different, so people can’t relate to them, but they’re going to win because they want to prove everyone wrong.

These nonobvious, talented people will drive the next wave of entrepreneurship. Sadly, the current seed-stage venture capital model isn’t set up to find and support these types of founders. I think there’s a massive opportunity to support more nonobvious founders outside the traditional venture capital network, and it’s an area I’d like to focus on.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone had a safe and healthy holiday!

‍

Yesterday I went to the Atlanta Hawks vs. New Orleans Pelicans basketball game. It was a great game that went to overtime. Congrats to the Hawks for pulling out the win. I don’t watch sports on TV often, but I enjoy attending sporting events. The atmosphere and energy at a game are amazing, and you don’t get that at home, but that’s not what I enjoy most.

Sports teams create commonalities. People who otherwise may not have much in common share a love for their team. Sporting events bring them together. Serendipity becomes possible. People can build connections with each other as they cheer for their team. After the sporting event is over, with those connections intact, people have conduits into networks they otherwise might not have been able to penetrate.

I think of each sports team as the center of a network that attracts people from various other networks. The thing that amazes me is the number of unrelated networks sports pulls people from, bringing them together. That’s powerful, and I’m not sure if people have thought about this or comprehend it.

The conversations I had at the game yesterday reinforced this to me and crystallized why I love sporting events. I enjoy getting to know and learning from people in different networks, and sporting events are amazing for this.