Greg Foster, who left Atlanta venture firm Noro-Moseley Partners last September, says he’s in no hurry to take another full time gig.

“When I left Noro Moseley, I was determined to take a little time off,” he tells us. “I wanted to spend some time with our son and we’re expecting another child in a month.”

Greg Foster left Noro Moseley last September
after the VC firm shifted away from Digital Media

“I’m still looking for the next thing,” he tells us.

“I’ve debated, do I want to do something entrepreneurial and really run something? I’ve turned some things down and I’m being patient. It looks like the market is coming back.”

He certainly cannot be described as inactive, though. He’s working in an advisory capacity with several startups he had relationships with that he says were not necessarily a good fit for Noro-Moseley.

He’s also changed from holding board seats on several firms via his relationship with Noro-Moseley to independent advisory board roles with companies such as Atlanta’s Play on! Sports, a Turner spinout focused on the high school arena, Research Triangle-based StatSheet, and Atlanta’s Clearleap, which is poised to take advantage of the convergence of video across multiple platforms.

Foster says he’s also spending time in Chicago working with the popular online humor publication, The Onion.

Foster was previously VP of Corporate Development at Turner Broadcasting. Turner had bought his company, Southern Direct, an e-commerce platform for cable networks. His background equipped him to look at the digital media world from multiple angles.

Sweet Fun: Foster says joining the board of satire site, The Onion, was life achievement wise, up there with his 2nd place finish in the 4th grade science fair.

Where is digital media headed?

He wonders where digital media is headed. “The question is whether pure advertising supported plays are going to be an acceptable model to build the kind of scale venture investors are looking for. How much money do you have to spend to get to scale and even then, how much money can you make?” he asks.

“I’ve seen the graph where digital media advertising crosses over print this year,” he says. “But looking at the supply increase (of available digital ad inventory) over the same period, I wonder if supply has increased on that curve or steeper.”

Much Digital advertising is sold on cost per thousand impressions –CPM–as opposed to pay for performance, such as click-through or purchase.

New models needed

If excess inventory drives down the CPM rate for everyone, even larger publishers can have a hard time selling inventory at a decent rate, he notes. Smaller online publishers without the kind of large traffic that allows ad networks to sell space to large buyers such as Coke, have an even rougher go.

So, he says, firms such as Play On! Sports, a company focused on coverage of high school sports, are an example of a new kind of business model. “They make money on the ad side, but also on distribution. They monetize their content in different ways, the same kind of hedging that old media companies such as cable have been using for years.”

You might find Greg hanging out at the OK Café
along with other players in the startup ecosystem.

So, while companies such as Facebook have so much scale they can grow on that basis, most digital media startups looking at an ad-based model “Need to look for something to hedge that,” says Foster. “StatSheet, for instance, uses both an ad play and a licensing play.”

Advertising not a bad word

He says regional media companies that have a great name in the community and good relationships need to find other income streams such as putting on events. “The Southeast Venture Conference is a good example,” he says. “People assume TechJournal South will have good people at its events.”

Some pure ad plays will still get funding, he says, “But there are not going to be as many of those. It’s harder to raise capital early on.”

Despite that, he says, “There’s a burgeoning community of really smart folks coalescing around a host of digital media deals.”

He says he advises digital media companies that “Advertising is not a bad word. All the measurements indicate that significant money is flowing into the digital world. But venture capitalists want to see a hedge against times like we’re in right now.”

He notes that a number of new events are aimed at entrepreneurs and the tech community. “There is a small but growing ‘Twitterati’ in Atlanta,” he says. “In a few minutes, I can find out what’s going on.”

Foster says one of the top spots to mingle with the startup community is The 5th Street Starbucks near Tech Square in Atlanta.

Where the entrepreneurs are

He says you can find many of Atlanta’s movers and shakers in the entrepreneurial and tech community hanging out at the Starbucks near Tech Square in Midtown. “That’s a hot place to see startup folks if you just want to walk in and see some,” he says.

Goldbergs and the OK Café attract a lot of people from the startup ecosystem, he says, such as lawyers, CEOs, and dealmakers. On the West side, he says he also likes West Egg, a breakfast focused restaurant that serves breakfast and Southern fare for lunch.

Octane, another coffee shop on the West side is “cool and hip,” he says. “You’ll see people building business plans or coding.”

Foster says a new generation of business and technology leaders taking the reins in the city now with assistance from the old guard such as Ben Dyer, Sig Mosley of Imlay Investments and others. “Maybe we’ll look back in 15-20 years and says, ‘That’s the point where the new guard took over.’ I think it’s a call to action. We need to keep this going and lead the parade. It may not be one or two persons, but a whole host of people.”

Reprinted from our sister publication: www.TechViewAtlanta.com