Growing communities need rallying points, and Atlanta’s startup community is no exception. 

I joined the Atlanta startup community a little over 10 years ago as a developer at Air2Web.  I missed most of the dot-com free-flowing cash, but my experience at the TechJournal Deck Party in 2007 was that a lot of people flooded into startups in Atlanta and washed out when the money dried up.

Things were pretty quiet until around 2007, when events like Atlanta Startup Weekend (which spawned Skribit) and a couple of other events helped us all realize that we weren’t alone in wanting to build great new companies. I’ve hired 2 people I met that weekend, have worked with many more people, and keep in touch with many more people that that from 2007. Before this, I didn’t know of Atlanta startup events, and this was a great awakening.

A couple of years ago, there was a great debate over whether there were “too many” events. We had multiple startup events every week, and nobody knew which ones were important enough to go to. We still have numerous events each week. Some people go to most events, some people go to zero events, nobody knows which events they “should” go to.

I am suggesting that some events should be “can’t miss” events, but they need to be big enough that “important” people can blend in. Some friends we visited this past weekend attend a huge church in Nashville. Several fairly major celebrities such as country music star Brad Paisley attend this church because the event is big enough that they can blend in and not be noticed. Until we outgrow it, I’m suggesting that Atlanta needs some “tent pole” events that form the basis of our community, where successful and aspiring entrepreneurs, VCs, angel investors, and anyone else interesting can mingle without the event being so small that they feel like a target.

I am suggesting that Atlanta Startup Drinks and ATDC Entrepreneur’s Night should be “can’t miss” events each month. I think Startup Drinks needs to grow up a bit, but is up to the task. It needs to look more like the Mashable/Regator mixer, every month. Sponsored, big, in an event space. At this month’s Startup Drinks, we were kicked out at 8 pm – the hospitality and free food/drink were great, but the early ending was just too… early. $5k/month in sponsorships would give sponsors great exposure to some of the smartest, most innovative people in Atlanta and make for a KILLER monthly event.

I give great credit to ATDC for starting Entrepreneurs’ Night, apparently on the 3rd Thursday of each month. I’ve been to 2 of the 3 meetings so far, and assuming Cloud Sherpas doesn’t announce they are leaving town on April 21st, it should be a great event. If your startup isn’t willing to pony up $50/year for some of the best advice and networking in Atlanta, I question how serious you are about your startup. I don’t know if ATDC opens this event to angels and VCs, but I hope they do.

A tent without poles looks like a messy blanket. Atlanta needs some tent pole events to move our community forward. We have too many struggling one-person startups, too many people who NEVER show up to ANY event, too many existing entrepreneurs with “FU Money” working on vanity projects, too many investors afraid of attending an event for fear of spending  an hour talking to a biz dev guy who wants to build a daily deal site but can’t find a developer to build it for them for 1% of the company.

What do YOU think? Could a couple of highly intentional monthly events plus a few annual/quarterly events do a better job of building community and success among Atlanta startups? Are there better monthly events to anchor community? What annual/quarterly events are key to the community?