Twillio is great for getting a small app out the door. But if you need to scale it and get any advanced form of call control it doesn't support it. It also is a lot more difficult to move away from it if you need to scale out and use other systems. With Tropo you can integrate it with Adhearsion and then as you need to scale move it to Rayo or Asterisk......and you also are not limited to the currently supported countries with Either offering. Tropo allows you to set up your own endpoint in a country they don't support and will integrate that in. So if you are in a South American country, or any place that Twillio doesn't support it is the only game in town.
This thing is a joke. Searched for Atlanta Georgia and came across someone who had no open source contributions on and three skeleton projects as a top guy while high profile open source contributors were not in the system.
Ok, so it is cheaper to do business in the south...but businesses that start in the south will get a 250k round of funding while the same one would get 2 million in the valley...which one is going more likely to give a company to get the traction it needs?
Because there's definitely no examples of bootstrapped companies which have gained more traction than funded companies, and (gasp) maybe even been more successful...
Come on. Let's end this celebration of funding once and for all, and start celebrating the hard working entrepreneurs who bootstrap.
I have mixed emotions about this. On one hand it is great to see the press. On the other hand as soon as they started talking about agencies and SCAD in their post that was all that I needed to see.
Sadly, the Atlanta startup scene has way too many Wordpress designers doing basic websites, MBA/Marketers looking for technical co-founders and MBA/Marketers who are looking for funding to hire a inexpensive team in (select your favorite low cost development country). Atlanta has a lot of Agencies etc., but if the Atlantic is mentioning SCAD as a highpoint of their visit that says it all right there.
I am hopeful that will change, but the first step to solving this is getting over the Stockholm syndrome, admitting to how bad the problem is and not just accepting the status quo. Saying that at least we have some organizations forming is great, but not enough.
This is all great until you actually try to raise money in one of these towns. Atlanta is a great example of that. There are a lot of ideas, and very few people that can actually execute on them. Also, even if you have a viable product you will still play hell getting a decent round of funding in Atlanta which is why a lot of startups and talent have left for the Valley.
"First, if you're an entrepreneur with a company in the South, we'd like to invite you to record your "Creation Story" as an audio clip"
"Second, if you represent a region, say the Greater Bossier Economic Development Foundation, and you want to make a pitch for your area, whether or not it's on our route, you can write us 300 words"
If you have a product that is low risk and already earning revenue you will get funding in Atlanta.....with terms requiring you to give up a lot more of your company, a lot of extra overhead with financials etc..
I would like to see this change, but this is the state of things today and if it is going to get fixed people need to be honest about how bad the problem is. The first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem.
Ideas are a dime a dozen, and there are some investors who will be duped by non-technical types and throw money at it but the solid businesses are founded by people who can actually execute the idea........sounds like this startup might be headed for the dead pool.
And keep in mind that the interface for Tropo and Adhearsion are very similar so if you need to expand beyond using Twillio or Tropo it gives you a lot of options with less pain...you can also use Adhearsion with Tropo as you are transitioning an app.
