By Joe Procopio

Last night at dinner, Windsor Circle’s Matt Williamson was a busy man. In between bites and drinks, he filled pages in a notebook with research on a number of investors who introduced themselves after his pitch. The beautiful thing was there was a veritable cornucopia of information to be had among the six of us at dinner, and by the time it was over, he was armed.

Williamson says, “It’s been an incredible experience being in such a tight concentration of venture capitalists. The overwhelming response is that we’re a compelling story for such a short amount of time that Windsor Circle has been around. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how helpful the VCs are.”

He said a lot more than that, but I blacked out. It was late.

He’s not alone. Several startups are making that upward swing from the pitches into meetings, and if yesterday was an explosion of activity, then this morning and afternoon should be buzzing with follow up.

Not Just Digital

PodPonics  is an Atlanta based high tech agriculture startup, converting shipping containers into high tech controlled growing environments producing fresher, urban, weather-safe produce — in other words better and faster with incredible yield. These containers can be stacked 10 high to produce 150x yield per acre.

That’s a game changer.

CEO Matt Liotta will present this afternoon. But they’ve been networking and meeting people in preparation. They say it’s a good setup, allowing mass concentration of conversation is short periods of time and they’ve been able to generate interest before they even take the stage.

Not Just Deals

It isn’t just the dealmaking though. This year, I’ve met more entrepreneurs and potential entrepreneurs who are here just to get the lay of the land and figure out how to take the next steps with their idea or fledgling company.

The panels have also been refreshingly honest. The first sentence I heard in the Venture Capital Outlook session was that “the wheels fell off on August 15^th.” Having been out in the field raising money at that point, I absolutely agree with that. It’s like the mirage vanished.

Overall, there seems to be a lot of activity in the $1 billion plus range, and a lot in the under $100 million range, with a big black hole in the sweet spot. This is troubling for those early-stage graduates, but with such an emphasis on customers and revenue over the last four years, it’s certainly not a shocker.

Crowd-funding

There is a lot of visceral reaction to crowd-funding, and you’re going to see a lot more in this space in the near future, and it will probably be volatile and filled with argument.

It’s tricky, to say the least. There was a lot of talk about how it can and should be done, not only from a legal perspective but also making sure that you can get follow on money and that there are no surprises going into your next round.

However it can’t be ignored. Kickstarter, though not technically crowd-funding but more beta-product pre-purchase (or free T-shirt), has done three $1 million plus deals already this year.

So while Groupon, Facebook, and Zynga dominate the exit talk, crowd funding made up a large portion of the entry talk.

Undercover Angel

But it wasn’t the only talk. Angels are making more noise these days, and a common theme, the lack of organization in the Angel community that makes it hard to get started, is still an issue, even post AngelList. One of the questions was “where do I find Angels” and the first answer was “LinkedIn.”

Coincidentally, TechCrunch did a post last night on AngelList potentially creating a common pitch-deck template. And while I don’t agree that that’s the right next step, it should be about more robust ways to build relationships between the entrepreneurs and the angels, it’s at least a step.

Joe Procopio

Joe Procopio heads up product engineering for automated content startup Automated Insights. He also founded and runs startup network ExitEvent, consulting marketplace Intrepid Company, and the Intrepid Media writers network. You can read him at http://joeprocopio.com and follow him at http://twitter.com/jproco.