Episode 9 | Geoff Graham

The Atlanta Story

The Atlanta Story podcast features meaningful stories of Atlanta’s builders, creators, and entrepreneurs. In this episode Jon Birdsong sits down with Geoff Graham, Founder of GuildQuality.

During his early career in residential development, Geoff found a niche service surveying homebuyers and their customer experiences with contractors. In 2002, he started GuildQuality, a software company making the manual process much more simple and scalable. Since then, he righted the company through The Great Recession, built the business to over 50 people, and recently sold it to Providence Capital. Graham is already on to his next businesses which we cover. After listening to today's podcast, we’re confident you’ll be keeping your ears and eyes open to problems ready to solve around you.

The Atlanta Story is put together by the folks at Atlanta Ventures -- and we can’t wait to share some of the personalities behind the brand. Atlanta Ventures invests in entrepreneurs through community, content, and capital -- most notably through our Studio with companies like Greenzie and Intown Golf Club. We believe the best entrepreneurs learn from other great artists in different fields.

In this episode, we discuss…

1. What prompted you to be come an entrepreneur (2:53)
2. When did Geoff get the entrepreneurial bug? (5:10)
3. How did a homebuilder transition to software? (8:20)
4. How did you make the transition from real-estate development to software CEO? (9:35)
5. How did Geoff know there was authentic demand? (14:50)
6. How did Geoff communicate a technical valuable prop to less people who were not behind a computer all day? (19:45)
7. Geoff shares his internal dialogue on whether to raise capital or bootstrap (24:30)
8. Geoff talks about the value of channel partnerships and what makes one valuable. (30:23)
9. How did Geoff build a quality culture at GuildQuality? (31:15)
10. How did Geoff think about and decide on where to locate the business in Atlanta? (35:00)
11. When did Geoff know it was the right time to sell? (37:30)
12. What new businesses is Geoff working on? (43:40)
13. Why Atlanta and what has Atlanta done for you? (49:20)

How you can get involved:

Visit atlantaventures.com/studio if you’re interested in learning more about Atlanta Ventures and the Studio.

Where you can find us:

Website: www.atlstory.com

Twitter: @theatlantastory

Instagram: @theatlantastory

YouTube: Here

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