As Atlanta increasingly becomes recognized as a place for companies to build technology products, a support system is important to ensure tech talent is not only attracted, but retained. Technology executive Andy Badstubner has taken on the challenge of ensuring this support system is in place.
Now serving as a technology product and team scaling consultant as the founder of Amplify Technology Group, Badstubner formerly served as the CTO of fintech company Kabbage. At Kabbage, he grew the technology team from 22 to 100+ members during a time of massive growth for the company — from a valuation of $250 million to its over $1 billion today.
But he was frustrated by the lack of resources, networking, and community for those serving as leaders or would-be leaders on the product development side of Atlanta’s technology companies. He says this is in contrast to the multiple networking groups, awards and recognition programs, and educational opportunities for those on the internal technology side (CIOs or CISOs) in the city.
To solve this, he is now launching ATL CTO, a group intended to bring together Atlanta’s top tech product leaders, from startups up to large companies. The group will host a bi-monthly speaker series and provide access to networking and educational resources, as well as build a sense of community for those building Atlanta’s technology scene.
ATL CTO’s inaugural event will take place September 13, 2017 at the Atlanta Tech Village and will feature Jay Sandhaus, CTO at PlayOn! Sports to talk about the technology behind streaming live sports. PlayOn! currently streams over 30,000 live high school sports games annually.
Future speakers come from Evernote and gaming-based corporate learning platform mLevel.
Badstubner says in the future, he hopes to see the group turn into a place where junior level technology employees or even students can learn from and be inspired by leaders in the space.
Learn more and join ATL CTO here.
