Salesloft CEO Kyle Porter’s entrepreneurial journey could be traced back to one moment in his childhood.
The year is 1990. Porter is 8 years old, visiting the Georgia Institute of Technology, his dad’s alma mater. He fell in love with the Yellow Jackets football and basketball teams and promised himself he would become a “Ramblin’ Wreck" Georgia Tech student.
Ten years later, Porter kept his promise then joined the state’s Advanced Technology Development Center, a startup incubator hosted by Georgia Tech, shortly after graduating. There, he found a passion for technology.
That passion has grown through multiple companies and to where he is today, co-founder and chief executive of Salesloft, a sales engagement platform that recently surpassed a $2.3 billion valuation. The company employs more than 700 employees, with more than half based in Atlanta. Porter expects to have more than 1,000 by this time next year.
Porter’s story illustrates the overall expansion of the Atlanta tech ecosystem. Salesloft’s success shows how entrepreneurial resources, mentorship networks and university talent have grown for more than a decade to propel Atlanta startups to new heights in the past couple years. Five local startups — Salesloft being the first — surpassed $1 billion valuations this year, and Georgia startups have collectively raised a record amount of investments.
'Why I love this place’
Porter grew up in Gwinnett County, about 30 miles northeast of Atlanta. Some of his love for the city came from those childhood trips. As a businessman, he can rattle off the city’s attributes — the international airport, the Fortune 500 companies headquartered here. But his affinity for the city comes from its people.
Salesloft launched in 2011 through Atlanta Ventures, a program that helps entrepreneurs brainstorm ideas for new businesses and launch them. The program is run by the venture capital firm’s founder David Cummings, who co-founds the business and provides an initial investment and firm resources.
Cummings is an Atlanta legend in the tech community. He founded marketing automation startup Pardot and sold that company for $100 million. A year after the sale, he established the Atlanta Tech Village, a Buckhead coworking space and community for startups, where Atlanta Ventures is based. His goal was to create resources and networks for Atlanta startups that he didn’t have when he came to the city a decade prior. Since the Pardot sale, he’s helped launch 10 companies that employ thousands of people.
In the early days of Salesloft, the company was on the edge of going under, Porter said. The capital from that first investment was gone. The team had left.
But Cummings wasn’t worried.
“He was investing in Salesloft because he wanted me to find fulfillment,” Porter said. “That represents the types of attitudes I see in the Atlanta area. That’s why I love this place.”
Porter is becoming a mentor to the next generation of startups including Infinite Giving, launched by a former Atlanta Tech Village employee, and Voxie.
Porter has seen Salesloft employees start their own companies:
- Stephen Gladney, a former Salesloft engineer, launched OrderNerd. It completed the Techstars Atlanta accelerator and was bought by restaurant tech company Popmenu.
- Jordan Arogeti, a Salesloft account executive, launched an angel investment practice with her husband to support local startups. She also remains in her role with Salesloft.
‘Critical mass’
Since Atlanta Tech Village launched, more local resources became available for entrepreneurs. Techstars partnered with Cox Enterprises to bring the accelerator program here in 2016. The city funded an incubator for female entrepreneurs in 2017. Georgia Tech and Georgia State University launched accelerator programs for student and recent graduates in 2016 and 2019, respectively. The Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurship opened last year to support Black-owned businesses and startups.
Those resources help entrepreneurs grow their companies locally, which sustains Atlanta’s positioning as an innovation hub, local tech executives and investors tell Atlanta Inno. New venture capital firms, including Overline and Zane Venture Fund, are also setting up shop. Those firms create more local capital, which circulates through the ecosystem and makes the sector more resilient to economic downturns. A community of successful entrepreneurs helps early-stage founders solve business problems.
“Building an ecosystem takes repetition — growing, funding, selling, repeat,” Tech Square Ventures partner Vasant Kamath previously told Atlanta Inno. “Eventually you get critical mass. Now is that time.”
That’s one of the reasons Porter says he declined to sell Salesloft when a buyer surfaced early in the company’s life. He wanted to be part of Atlanta’s success story.
Tech talent
Porter set up Salesloft’s office at the Regions Plaza building, where the company has about 60,000 square feet. In the next year, Salesloft plans to hire about 200 employees locally, Porter said.
The office is in Midtown, where Georgia Tech’s Technology Square brings together corporations, startups and university resources, spurring economic development. The innovation district has attracted thousands of corporate tech jobs in the past year, including Google, Visa Inc., Cisco Systems Inc. and Micron Technology Inc. Georgia Tech graduates lead Atlanta startups Stord Inc. and Flock Safety. Both reached $1 billion valuations this year.
As the corporations open their offices, more executives will come to Atlanta and add to mid-career talent to the mix, top tech CEOs said at a Venture Atlanta panel.
“Once you pass $5 million to $10 million of scale, it’s slim pickings anywhere on the East Coast,” OneTrust CEO Kabir Barday said of recruiting senior leadership. “It’s really heavy on the West Coast. The more those companies move their second headquarters here, it triggers unbelievable talent.”
When Salesloft was only four employees and joined the Techstars accelerator in Boulder, Colorado, investors told the team to move to San Francisco, Boston or New York, Porter said. Now, Salesloft is one of the companies that has changed Atlanta's reputation.
