Over the past few years, I’ve connected with lots of investors outside Atlanta interested in learning more about the city’s start-up ecosystem. It isn’t easy to understand, I’ve often heard, and they want to know why. I explain that Atlanta’s ecosystem is composed of mini communities built around similarities. Universities (Georgia Tech, Atlanta University Center, and others), neighborhoods, and coworking spaces all have their own communities. These types of mini communities are a normal part of a healthy start-up ecosystem. The challenge in Atlanta is that they don’t overlap enough. In my explanations, I say that people don’t like to leave their neighborhoods. That’s half joke, half truth. More accurately, people are less inclined to leave their preferred mini community.

Venture Atlanta is this week, and many events are taking place. Yesterday I attended two evening events given by different mini communities. An investor and a founder were tagging along with me. Both were from out of town and interested in learning about the Atlanta start-up ecosystem. As we left the first event and entered the second, one of them commented that the events felt like two different worlds. Both were attending by amazing people from mini communities who want Atlanta to win—people who were noticeably different and only minimally overlapping. As we left the last event, my two guests shared that attending the two events (which were two miles apart) and seeing the mini communities helped them understand the Atlanta ecosystem.

Legendary companies are built when high-potential entrepreneurs are matched with capital, scaling knowledge, and relationships. Atlanta’s mini-community dynamic creates network distance, which fosters inefficient matching.

I see an opportunity to supercharge early-stage entrepreneurship in Atlanta. If the number of conduits between these mini communities were to grow, the free flow of information and relationships in the city would do likewise, thus reducing network distance and increasing matching efficiency.