Over the past few weeks, a sense of anticipation has been building across Atlanta’s tech scene. At networking events and startup hubs, the same question kept surfacing: “Did you hear who’s coming back?”
The answer, spoken with enthusiasm each time, was that Jennifer Bonnett had moved back to Atlanta.
Bonnett, a veteran of Atlanta’s tech ecosystem, has played pivotal roles as a technologist, founder, C-suite executive, and community builder. After six years in Savannah, she’s back in Atlanta and is ready to steer the city’s tech scene into its next era as the new Vice President of Technology and Entrepreneurship at Invest Atlanta.
Atlanta’s Tech Ecosystem Over The Years
Bonnett’s career provides a unique lens on the evolution of Atlanta’s startup landscape.
A self described “recovering technologist,” Bonnett built her career in coding, consulting, and software development at Fortune 1000 companies before moving into startups in 1997. She was the founding VP of Technology for Atlanta-based eTour (acquired by Ask.com in 2001), joining CEO Roger Barnette at the early stages of the company.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Bonnett said there was less of a “cohesive ecosystem” of startups in the city and there were just a few startup-focused programs in the city like ATDC, eHatchery, TAG, and the CEO Council. But most of the investor events were “closed door and behind the scenes.”
2008 served as an inflection point for both Bonnett and the wider Atlanta startup ecosystem. A mentor of hers moved to California because he was unable to raise funds locally, bemoaning the lack of a strong and collaborative startup ecosystem in town. Bonnett said that was her “impetus for getting involved” to activate the startup community.
She told Hypepotamus that her guiding question from the beginning was “how do we make Atlanta a better place for startups?”
Bonnett founded StartupChicks in 2009 to connect and educate women entrepreneurs. The organization grew to over 10,000 members. That led Bonnett to Georgia Tech’s ATDC (Advanced Technology Development Center), where she expanded the organization’s educational programs and outreach across the State of Georgia.
After serving as ATDC’s Director and General Manager, Bonnet moved to coastal Georgia to be closer to her aging parents in 2018. She served as the executive director of The Creative Coast in Savannah, a non-profit organization focused on developing the Savannah region’s technology ecosystem.
Bonnett’s Next Chapter
Bonnett was on sabbatical when the job posting for Invest Atlanta came up, but she said people across her network in Atlanta kept telling her to look into the position.
“The job description just aligned so much with my background and my beliefs around ecosystem development,” she told Hypepotamus.
But there was one more crucial thing that made it easy for her to say yes to moving back to Atlanta. She recognized that Atlanta has started “aligning itself around the idea that [the city] could be a Top 5 tech hub. There’s a lot of questions about figuring out the ‘how.’ But the why and the overall mission, there’s a unified consensus that this is what we want…from the Mayor, to the economic developers, to the chamber, and the powers that be within the tech community.”
Prepping For The Future
As Vice President, Bonnett’s goals are threefold. She is charged with running and revamping WEI (the Women’s Entrepreneurship Initiative), attracting and retaining high-quality tech jobs in the city, and solidifying Atlanta’s place as a Top 5 tech hub.
She will work closely with Donnie Beamer and the City’s Office of Innovation and Technology to make that last point a reality. Beamer and Bonnett are even setting KPIs (Key performance indicators) together to ensure they are working in lockstep to achieve that goal.
Just several weeks into the position, Bonnett said she is spending a lot of time on a “listening tour” to connect or reconnect with people across Atlanta’s startup ecosystem.
The Invest Atlanta role is a natural extension of Bonnett’s unique entrepreneurial journey. Now, she is ready to lead the city’s startup ecosystem through its next chapter as a major technology player.
“There will be a lot of challenges in the details … .but it’s an exciting time,” she added. “I was part of the start…and I want to be part of the rest of the ride.”