By Amy Lopp
Y
ou may not have heard of Roundsphere. Or Snagshout. Or
Seller Labs. Or Bookscouter. If you have, then I commend
you for being cooler than me, but I bet you s ll couldn’t
guess how it is that they came to be in Athens. We as
economic developers employ all kinds of techniques to en ce new
companies to our community, but we never would’ve predicted how
start‐up guru Brandon Checke s chose our town. Checke s and his
wife were living in Maryland when they decided to complete a
survey on a website called FindMyPlace.com. A er filling out the
somewhat exhaus ve list of ques ons, they were rewarded with a
list of locales perfectly suited to them. Athens topped that list and
they took the plunge. Making a major life decision based on the
results of a website quiz may seem nuts to most, but to Checke s it
really is no big deal. He’s an expert at mixing a li le risk‐taking with
some well‐thought out market research. That a tude is what led
him to start Bookscouter.com several years ago. Bookscouter, a
website that uses ISBN numbers to provide users with the best sales
price for their used textbooks, was the venture that aligned him with
his now‐partner, Paul Johnson, who has helped to catapult the
organiza on into several new ventures.
Johnson and Checke s now house all their companies under one
organiza on called Roundsphere that calls the Press Place building
downtown home. Their office was buzzing with ac vity on the
Friday that I visited, maybe in part because Roundsphere provides a
company‐wide lunch on Fridays which draws employees together for
informal fellowship. I heard more than a couple of new ideas being
tossed around and everyone seemed so, well, excited. Johnson and
Checke s certainly encourage employee par cipa on at every turn.
From the endless snack and soda supply to a lenient open door
policy, these guys were engaged. I watched as Checke s discussed
code with a new hire, Johnson reviewed the most in mida ng
spreadsheet I’ve ever seen and they both got deep into discussions
with a vendor over a new marke ng structure. If it sounds like they
were busy, they were. Roundsphere is home to several ventures
including Seller Labs, a company whose
product line is set to assist ecommerce
relevant
merchants
in
providing
transac onal communica on and to
improve their sales presence on Amazon
and elsewhere; Snagshout, a website and
social pla orm that allows merchants to
offer their product at a deep discount in
exchange for relevant feedback and reviews;
and Scope, a new Big Data analy cs tool for
ecommerce. They have even partnered with
a game developer who just launched a game
for the Android and Apple marketplace.
(There’s so much going on in that office that
even Paul didn’t know the game had launched. His response when
Checke s told him was, “What? We have a game now? That’s so
cool!)
Start‐ups like this are so cool. The office was open and welcoming.
It is right in the heart of Athens, close to UGA and in the thick of
downtown. The employees were young and fresh and full of
enthusiasm. It’s exactly the kind of corporate headquarters our
community has been talking about for ages. And they just chose us.
It almost seems too easy. Scoring another Roundsphere in Athens
can’t be that easy though. We can’t count on another genius
entrepreneur taking an online quiz and se ling down here. Besides,
a tech‐based venture in Athens is not without its challenges ‐ namely
a workforce challenge. Athens competes against Atlanta for talent,
but also against bigger tradi onal tech‐focused ci es like San
Francisco and Boston. Even though our cost‐of‐living is lower, the
wages necessary to a ract top talent s ll have to be compe ve
with larger markets. Roundsphere is able to rely on its excellent
company culture and exis ng rela onships to recruit solid
programmers and engineers, but they’ve also learned to invest in
raw talent – even self‐taught folks with a few years of experience –
as long as they possess an entrepreneurial spirit. People who are
driven and can “think like a computer” as Johnson says. Training
more talent is the name of the game for our community, and with
an increased focus on S.T.E.M. in the K‐12 school system,
o