Fintech South 2022: Robert Daniel with ATDC

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Georgia World Congress Center for Fintech South 2022. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio. Brought to you by Atlanta Blockchain Center. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:27] Lee Kantor here back at Fintech South 2022. So excited to be talking to Robert Daniel with ATDC. He’s the FinTech Catalyst. Welcome, Robert.

Robert Daniel: [00:00:36] Welcome. It’s great to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:38] Well, tell us — for the people who don’t know, tell us a little bit about ATDC and your role as FinTech Catalyst.

Robert Daniel: [00:00:48] Yes, I’d love to. ATDC has been around for 40 years. We’re an incubator in Atlanta, state funded. So, our goal is to really produce some fantastic startups that are coming out of ATDC, the incubator that really impact the Georgia economy. So, we’re looking for companies anywhere from, hey, I have an idea and I’m trying to figure out how to get this off the ground, all the way up to, hey, I need to raise Series A and find that next growth trajectory.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:16] And then, do you mind sharing, if you know, some of the kind of superstar companies that have come out of ATDC? I think this is one of those best kept secrets. Unless you are kind of in the know, you may not be aware of how important ATDC has been to some of the biggest startups here in Georgia.

Robert Daniel: [00:01:35] I think that’s the key. There’s a lot of unicorns that have popped up. We’ve had 13 unicorns over the past eight years. We’ve been fortunate to see Rob from Kabbage. He was up on stage earlier. He’s one of the unicorns, green light, green sky flocked — flock safety. There’s just some phenomenal companies that are coming out of there, and we’d love to hear more of those successes. I think 90% of our signature’s companies graduate with a certain amount of success. Obviously, we’d love to see more unicorns, but they really feed the Atlanta economic — or ecosystem a little better that way because that money keeps pouring back into talent and you have some more startups, just like Rob is starting to keep now. So, you have follow-on companies just like that.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:22] Right. They have a successful exit and then, they — fortunately, for the folks here in Georgia, they decide to stay here in Georgia instead of going to some island somewhere and, you know, going to the beach all day.

Robert Daniel: [00:02:34] And that’s what we need to see more of. And that’s what I’m excited about. We’re starting to see more and more of that in the ecosystem here. And that’s going to create more opportunity all around.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:44] Now, at ATDC, like you said, you can be a student, you can be young. It’s for any part of kind of the life cycle of a startup, right? It’s not just for people who are funded. It’s not just for super technologists. You can be a non-technical founder. There’s a place for you to learn to kind of just educate yourself about how to be a leader or how to get involved in the startup community. It is — you don’t have to have this fully baked to participate at some of the work that’s happening at ATDC.

Robert Daniel: [00:03:20] That’s correct. We have a staff of about 30 people. I’m one of them. I’m the FinTech Catalyst. So, my job is to focus on the Fintech vertical. We’ve got a program for that. We’ve also got a supply chain vertical. We’ve got robotics. We’ve got health tech. We’ve got kind of the ESG focus and sustainability. So, the coaches are there to help get you through that, you know, product market fit, customer discovery, all the way up to how do you find partnerships? We’ll help you try to connect into people and leverage our connections as well as who are the angel investors or who are the venture capitalists we need to talk to. That’s our role to kind of connect the dots there and make those opportunities happen.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:03] So, it doesn’t matter what stage you’re at, there’s a place for you at ATDC. And that’s important for people to understand. And the fees there are minimal and sometimes nothing.

Robert Daniel: [00:04:15] That’s exactly correct. Our lowest membership is — our lowest dollar denominated membership is the Educate platform, which is fantastic because there’s a lot of training and around — especially customer discovery, which you need to know to get off the ground. And then, there’s other opportunities to connect with how do you leverage grants for some of our startups there? So, having that education platform is so critical for a lot of people who have never gone through this program before. They’re interested in startups. They have an interesting idea, but they might not be either technically savvy with a lot of the coding, or they might not be able to understand what goes into being a great entrepreneur. We’ll help teach that. We’ll help get you off the ground, and then we’ll make those connections as you progress through the various different memberships.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:02] So, what’s your back story? Did you come from a startup? Did you come from technology into the — you’ve been in Fintech your career and decided to get involved with a ATDC to give back? Like, what’s your back story?

Robert Daniel: [00:05:15] Yes, my back story is a bit interesting. I don’t have a startup behind me. When I originally graduated from Georgia Tech in 2001, wanted to get into startups. Not the best time during the recession. And at that point in time, you saw a lot of companies being pulled away from Georgia. I went into more of a traditional finance. I went into hedge funds until 2008, which was a different time.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:38] Timing is everything for you.

Robert Daniel: [00:05:39] Timing is everything. And then, for the past six years, I’ve been working in New York at a company that was kind of consulting and also producing events. We’d talk about best practices in the banking and payments and Fintech space. So, really learn what the best operations were and wanted to leverage that when the pandemic hit to really come back to Atlanta and make an impact here. I was looking for purpose in my life. I saw that the startups were actually now staying in Atlanta and the ecosystem here was amazing. Got involved with TAG, the TAG FinTech society. And just the support kind of pulled me back in and said, I need to be here. I want to be part of this. And the growth that we’re — we’ve yet to see in Atlanta. I mean, it’s phenomenal, but there’s a lot more coming and you just want to be a part of it.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:27] Now, for folks who, you know, maybe haven’t worked in the New York environment that you did for the years, can you kind of just shed a little light on what it’s like there as opposed to here? Like, what are some of the — you know, there’s obviously trade-offs. What are some of the good and the bad and the ugly of the difference between New York and Atlanta?

Robert Daniel: [00:06:49] Wow. There’s — that’s — I think about that quite often. New York is very fast. It’s fast paced. You have to get the things going very quickly, especially when you’re in finance. Hedge funds, you’re trading down to the second. In a way, I feel like that sometimes happens in the in the startup ecosystem. You have to get things moving. You have to build a product —

Lee Kantor: [00:07:13] Action first, right? You got to take action.

Robert Daniel: [00:07:16] Yes, action. And you see that. But I think in New York, it’s a bit different. We were moving so quickly and sometimes it’s a little more gruff. The hospitality down in Atlanta is amazing. The networks that I see down here, you say, I need help, and people are like, oh, you need to talk to this person or you need to get involved —

Lee Kantor: [00:07:34] It’s very collaborative?

Robert Daniel: [00:07:35] Oh, yes. I had somebody who was saying, you need to be part of the technology executive roundtable. You need to get involved with TAG. You need to get involved with Fintech Atlanta. So, all of a sudden, it just weaves together a lot quicker. So, you have that support system. And I think that is — that’s the really power of Atlanta.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:55] That’s a secret sauce?

Robert Daniel: [00:07:56] It is the secret sauce. It’s the Southern hospitality.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:59] Right. And the relationships, to me, it’s very collaborative. Everybody’s kind of trying to help everybody. It’s not as — they don’t treat every relationship as precious, and I’m going to keep this from you because I need this information for myself.

Robert Daniel: [00:08:13] It’s all about the ecosystem and how can we build that up? You know, I was at Atlanta Blockchain Center and somebody said, well, you know, you have at ATDC, ATV, you know, Atlanta Blockchain Center and Ali over at ATV, she said, but we’re all here to support the ecosystem. We’re all here to see how we can work together and build that.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:33] Right.

Robert Daniel: [00:08:33] Because it’s —

Lee Kantor: [00:08:33] It’s not a zero-sum game?

Robert Daniel: [00:08:35] It’s not. And it’s more important to help everybody around us and produce more of those unicorns.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:53] Right.

Robert Daniel: [00:08:53] Because it gives back to the community in a way that affects our culture, it affects diversity, it affects education and our economic viability.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:53] Well, if somebody wants to get involved with a ATDC, what is the coordinates? What’s the best way to get a hold of you or somebody on your team?

Robert Daniel: [00:09:00] I’m available on LinkedIn or you, R. E. Daniel. Just look for R.E.D. That’s my initials. So, everybody usually calls me Red. I’m available on Twitter and, you know, just reach out to me.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:12] And ATDC.org? Is that the website?

Robert Daniel: [00:09:15] It’s at ATDC.org. You can’t miss it.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:17] All right. Well, thank you so much for doing what you do. It’s important and we appreciate you.

Robert Daniel: [00:09:22] It’s my pleasure.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:23] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll be back in a few at Fintech South 2022.

Outro: [00:09:35] This episode has been brought to you by Atlanta Blockchain Center. The catalyst for Atlanta’s emergence as the Premier Blockchain Innovation Hub globally, through cultivating entrepreneurship, inclusivity and education. To learn more, go to atlblockchaincenter.com.