ATA Screening Criteria
The Atlanta Technology Angels (ATA) Screening Committee meets once a
month to evaluate investment opportunities in companies which their
business plans have been reviewed by the committee. Each company presents
to the committee for 30-45 minutes. Following this meeting, the selected
companies will present to the entire ATA group.
The entire ATA group meets formally once a month to visit with and
evaluate these selected companies. If the interest in the investment
opportunity is high, the company and ATA will move into the due diligence,
which can facilitate an investment in the company. ATA, as a group will
invest between $250,000 and $750,000 in any one selected company.

Send one to these guys first.

Atlanta Technology Angels

ANGEL ORGANIZATIONS

Below is a listing of angel groups, as well as a listing of national organizations that have directories of investors and that provide matching services for entrepreneurs and angels. We are aware of additional operating groups that do not have Web sites. If you know of other angel organizations that have Web sites, please click here to let us know!

Dear Memestreams,

Send a plan to everyone on this list.

Russell

Angel Capital Association

Slot maker Unicum services 80% of Russian/CIS market;

New ‘Systems In Progress’ may revolutionize slot networking.

A big headline for a big company, Unicum is the gaming Goliath of Russia. With headquarters and manufacturing facilities in Saint Petersburg and offices in Moscow, Riga, Kiev and Ekaterinburg, Unicum currently provides gaming products and services to 80% of the market in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (former USSR members).

And, with its revolutionary new “Systems In Progress” (SIP) networking technology for slot machine linkage, tracking and control, Unicum’s impact on the CIS market appears poised to become even more massive. An overview of the company reveals a widely experienced, confident organization that is perfectly suited to launch a new era in gaming management tech.

Russia’s Gaming Goliath : Unicum

I do think I understand marketing and public relations, and I am astounded by the naivete of young people — black and white — who actually buy the canned rebelliousness not just of rap music but of most pop music.

It's all such an obvious con game. We hear so much about how kids today are cynical, skeptical, media-savvy and so forth. But if they're buying this hooey, they're idiots.

Want to be a real rebel? Read a book.

Kanye West is a Fake

"Obviously, such research does not speak at all to the question of the prejudice level of the president," said Banaji, "but it does show that George W. Bush is appealing as a leader to those Americans who harbor greater anti-black prejudice."

Gold Star. If I knew how to give gold stars, that is, or if I had any.

Study Ties Political Leanings to Hidden Biases

MaxDB is a heavy-duty, SAP-certified open source database that offers high availability, scalability and a comprehensive feature set. MaxDB complements the MySQL database, extending its market reach to large mySAP ERP environments and other applications that require maximum enterprise-level database functionality. The Book of MaxDB provides a thorough overview of the product and its functionality, including installation, administration, backup and recovery, SQL development, security, and development in PHP, Python, Java, and Perl.
[Full Description]

oreilly.com -- Online Catalog: Book of MaxDB, First Edition

Wow, really 'cheap' RAID storage solutions, where everything is redundant. And it uses Ultra ATA drives each on their own controller so you can cheaply expand with UATA drives for a fraction of the SCSI price. And the whole thing is easy to manage, cause its from Apple.

The Apple Store (U.S.) - Xserve RAID

Getting Started
Whitepaper: high-level overview
Concepts: architecture, user and security concepts, administration and performance
Glossary: alphabetical keyword list for experts
SQL Tutorial: using SQL with MaxDB
FAQ

MaxDB™ Documentation

key source of strength for Mentor Partners is that there are enough follow-on investors (including some two dozen Silicon Valley VC firms and strategic investors either already on the ground or very keen to invest in India) who can invest $3 million or more into their portfolio companies - when they are ready for it. Plus, as B.D.Goel, a member of the Mentor Partners network, points out, "success" for such a seed fund would be in validating the business models of their investee companies and helping them access name-brand investors as part of the first round. Mentor Partners will then rely on the follow on investors to take its investee companies to the next level, rather than having to hand-hold companies all the way to an exit. For entrepreneurs too, this is much better than having a larger fund invest $1-3 million when their products are still being built and then, just when they seem to be getting their marketing act together, start pushing towards a premature exit.Mentor Partners' model-including its relatively small fund size and its unique partner network-is a welcome addition to the Startup-VC ecosystem in India. What's even better is that there are more similar seed funds that are either up and running or being raised. While Bangalore has seen the launch of the $3 million Erasmic Incubation Fund, Mumbai-based angel investor Mahesh Murthy has teamed up with Pravin Gandhi (a co-founder of Infinity Venture) to raise a $10 million fund to be called, well, “Seed Fund”. Here's hoping that these seed funds-which are filling an increasingly obvious and large gap in the eco-system-will close their funds quickly and invest in creating some very exciting technology companies out of India in 2006.

Venture Intelligence India: New Seed Funds: Right time, Right Place, Right Model

Ever since I was a kid, I've been going back and forth to visit my family in India. But, in the past five or six years, something changed. My relatives, instead of asking me about all the things going on in America, started talking about all the things that were going on in India. There was a shine in their eyes talking about the progress that has already happened and that will come. It’s this hope and confidence that fundamentally changes the equation. People are now willing to take risks and entrepreneurship is starting from a grass-roots level. Indian companies are becoming confident enough to go shopping on a global scale and many are not afraid to grow aggressively. As the IPO and M&A markets become broader, it will provide more opportunities for small companies and, most crucially, the investors that put money into them.

This is true. Banaglore is SO hot right now. But it feels stable, too. The climate is ideal... its room temperature +-5 all year round. Forget about Hyderabad, its too hot.

So just forget about interacting with females, and mentally prepare yourself for the traffic and being stared at for months at a time and for a little bit of dysentary and get on that plane. You can hire 5 experienced developers in India for the price of one person here as long as you're willing to be there and get shit done. Being there gets you employees and infrastructure at half the rate you can contract it with an outsourcing firm. 50% displacement discount.

Got a techno-dream? Chase it, on the new frontier. The elephants name is Ganesha, and if you don't know what to order, try the Idli.

Venture Intelligence India: What's holding back the Indian Venture Capital Market?