It was a pleasure last week to hear Mike Eckert, new Executive Chairman of the Atlanta Technology Angels (ATA), speak to an angel group about his plans for ATA and his views regarding the local “ecosystem” for funding early stage companies. Eckert, former CEO of the Weather Channel and Pathfire, is an active investor and speaks from both experience and diligent examination of the topic at hand. ATA has invested quite a bit of money over its dozen-year history, but activity has slowed to a trickle in recent times. Eckert is working hard to re-energize ATA and to bring about better coordination with investing groups in the city and even in neighboring states.

A particular focus is defining what is “fundable” and communicating that to entrepreneurs. There appears to be strong interest at both the seed level and than again at the product with traction (revenue) level. A common theme across many investors I’ve talked with recently is that seed funding generally is available primarily for serial entrepreneurs. There’s not much enthusiasm for investing in OJT on how to start up a company. The gap between seed and traction seems to be reserved for friends and family.

More specifically, ATA classifies seed deals as investments of $100K or less, primarily local to Atlanta, preferably with an experienced entrepreneur and a thoughtful and relatively capital light plan targeting a potentially large market. The entrepreneur must be willing to accept fairly standardized ATA terms, have reasonable valuation expectations, and be receptive to help from ATA members with relevant expertise. The ATA’s next level of interest is basically a $200K minimum investment in a typical series A situation where the product is working, there is a paying customer (at least at the Beta level), two or more active managers are on board, and a growing market can be had. It is important to note that valuation is limited to $3M, and the life cycle of the investment is planned to be 3-5 years. (Many angels are currently locked into decade-old deals where the math is really working against the ROI, even if there is a ultimately a successful exit.)

If you are seeking to raise money and have a plan that fits one of the above categories, find someone in ATA to champion your deal or get yourself introduced by one of the credible local deal sources like the ATDC. The ATA web site is closed to nonmembers, so there’s no “over the transom” opportunity. Similar to the angel networks in the Valley and to nearly all institutional VC firms, you need a warm introduction to get any attention.

Here’s hoping that under Eckert’s leadership the ATA will resume pumping some meaningful dollars into Atlanta’s startups and early stage companies. Other groups, including one of the venture séances I attend, are also re-examining their missions in an effort to get more deals done. There is an interesting discussion underway on Quora. And, I think it’s great that Sanjay Parekh has added a companion job fair to Startup Riot – can’t sell your idea, then at least you can get a job!

What do I see anecdotally? While there is a pool of identified tech investors who collectively can support a decent number of worthy deals in 2011, some have shifted their interest to areas like income properties and others have decided to control and focus on one deal at a time rather than build a passive portfolio. Atlanta is still a real estate town, and a surprising amount of local tech deal investments have come from wealth created by real estate. For the most part those individuals have never appeared on any tech angel list and are relatively invisible in the aforementioned ecosystem. Those who have navigated safely through the last two years are still making an impact in our technology community.

I have argued in earlier posts that Atlanta has bypassed the enormous wealth creation of the Consumer Internet that has spawned so much funding for continued startups in that sector, but nearly all in San Francisco or the Valley. Even one of our local VCs commented in a recent AJC Sunday article on the economy that Atlanta doesn’t have the talent and resources to create something like a Groupon. I disagree with that, but in truth those types of deals are going to happen in proximity to funding sources, and that means primarily the Bay Area, NYC, and Chicago. So, if your idea fits that category, you might as well go where the money is.

Meanwhile, I certainly applaud individuals like Mike Eckert who have determined to make the most of the advantages we do have locally. He was instrumental in the passage of the Angel Investor tax credit, and he’s vigorously taken on a major new challenge. Hopefully we’ll see some big successes arise from ATA’s funding over the next few years.