Let's build up Atlanta, together.

Atlanta's startup scene is bigger than any one program, campus or neighborhood, and it grows when more of us show up for it. PursueATL is three ways in: change what AI says about Atlanta when someone asks where to build, find your people at this week's events, and partner with the builders in the Discord. All of it is free.

Three ways in

  • Shape what AI says. When someone asks AI where to build, Atlanta should come up. Every organization and every person here has a part. Find your part.
  • Show up this week. Every startup, tech and business event in the city, in one calendar, by neighborhood and by who it's for. See this week's events.
  • Build with others. One Discord for founders, operators, students, investors and the people who run Atlanta's programs. Join the Discord, free.

When someone asks AI where to build, Atlanta should come up.

More and more people ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Perplexity where to start a company, and AI answers from what it can read. What it reads about Atlanta can change. This is a citywide project to change it together: every organization, campus, newsroom and builder doing a small part, and a fresh measure every 90 days to see whether the answers move.

What AI says about Atlanta isn't fixed. A city can change it, together.

  • How AI visibility works. AI recommends from what it can read and cite: an organization's own pages, the lists and guides other people wrote, and reporting. It can't recommend what it can't find. See where AI gets its information.
  • Effort moves it. When an answer cites an organization's own site, AI picks that organization 29% of the time. When it doesn't, 9%. It is a correlation, and the clearest sign we have that a page AI can read and cite changes what it says. Read the answers yourself.
  • A city does it together. One team can fix its own page. It takes a city to change the story: programs, investors, campuses, the state and newsrooms linking to each other and saying the same true things. Every 90 days we measure whether it worked. Find your part.

Find your people in Atlanta's startup scene.

Atlanta's startup life is spread across a dozen neighborhoods and dozens of calendars, so most of it goes by unseen. We put every event in one place. See what's on this week, pick a room, and walk in. Explore this week's events. Free to join: the PursueATL Discord.

Every ninety days we run the visibility report, publish what AI gets wrong about Atlanta, and fix it together

  1. Stories Atlanta should own. We read the answers and name the openings: 7 this cycle.
  2. A short list for everyone. Every organization and every role gets specific actions, drafted, with the words to paste: find your part.
  3. Link it together. Pages link to each other and to the shared pages, so AI finds one connected story. The coordinating happens in the Discord.
  4. Measure, then publish the next list. We ask the same questions again and show what moved and who acted: the tracker.

Every action is one of three kinds of work: strengthen a page you have, publish a page that's missing, link and get listed.

How often Atlanta makes AI's top five depends on the question.

Asked where to start a company, AI puts Atlanta in its top five on 79% of its lists. Asked to name the country's top startup hubs, 17%. We asked ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity 125 questions people ask when choosing a US city to start, raise or hire in. 204 of the answers ranked cities. For each kind of question, here is how many of those lists had Atlanta on them and how many had it in the top five. Open any row to see its questions, and read the answers yourself. How these are counted.

How often each city makes the top five

  1. New York City: 96% of 127 ranked lists
  2. San Francisco Bay Area: 94% of 111 ranked lists
  3. Boston: 92% of 109 ranked lists
  4. Austin: 85% of 146 ranked lists
  5. Los Angeles: 77% of 64 ranked lists
  6. Seattle: 67% of 93 ranked lists
  7. Dallas: 58% of 64 ranked lists
  8. Atlanta: 57% of 142 ranked lists
  9. Raleigh-Durham: 56% of 98 ranked lists
  10. Chicago: 42% of 100 ranked lists
  11. Denver: 42% of 91 ranked lists
  12. Washington, D.C.: 40% of 72 ranked lists
  13. Miami: 37% of 78 ranked lists

Cities ranked in at least 60 answers, from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, September 2026. How we know.

The stories Atlanta should own

  1. Atlanta is rising. 0 of 40 answers about which US hubs are rising recommend Atlanta.
  2. Atlanta is where payments get built. 8 of 32 answers about support for a fintech startup here recommend an Atlanta organization.
  3. You can raise here, all the way to Series A. 3 of 24 answers about raising a Series A recommend an Atlanta investor we track.
  4. Senior engineers build careers here. 6 of 24 answers about hiring senior engineers here name no Atlanta organization at all.
  5. Every campus here launches companies. 3 of 8 universities AI names are never recommended by it.
  6. Georgia backs the companies that build here. 9 of 28 answers to a company moving to Georgia name none of the organizations we track, the state's own agencies included.
  7. There's a door here for every founder. 1 in 7 mentions of an Atlanta organization becomes a recommendation.

44% of what AI cites about Atlanta's ecosystem comes from lists and guides other people wrote; organizations' own sites, 43%.

Who are you with?

  • Programs and spaces: Say plainly who you are for, and point founders onward when you are not the fit.
  • Investors: Put Atlanta's capital on the record, so AI stops sending founders out of town to raise.
  • Universities: Show the pipeline on every campus: the engineers, the research and the companies that start here.
  • City and state: Publish Atlanta's numbers, dated and sourced, and tell a company moving here exactly who to call.
  • Media and storytellers: AI repeats what is reported, dated and sourced. The stories it can't find about Atlanta are stories it hasn't been able to read yet.
  • Communities: Carry the story: say Atlanta, show up, and fill the gaps nobody owns.

One of the 63 organizations AI names? Find your page: where AI places you, from not visible to visible, and the moves drafted for your team.

Ninety days: measure, set the map, act, measure again

  1. Measure (September 2026): We asked ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity 2,290 questions about Atlanta and traced all 63,532 sources they cited.
  2. Set the map (September, now): We publish the stories AI is missing, where it gets its information, and who can change each one.
  3. Act (Through November): Programs, investors, universities, the city and the community each take their part. Everything is optional and most of it takes an hour.
  4. Measure again (week of December 7, 2026): The same 340 questions, asked the same way, published whatever they show.

Published by PursueATL. Research by Resonate Labs. Data collected September 2026.