Mayor Reed plans Silicon Valley excursion to promote Atlanta's tech scene

• Max Blau/CL File

Mayor Kasim Reed is planning a trip to visit Silicon Valley to meet with tech leaders and promote Atlanta's emerging startup scene sometime in the next few months.

As part of his ongoing efforts to support the city's startups, Reed will head to the San Francisco and Palo Alto, Calif., early next year to rub shoulders with Internet titans and venture capital firms. He plans to take notes about the country's leading tech community and use his influence to put Atlanta entrepreneurs on Silicon Valley's map.

"We're organizing a series of meetings and talks for me to go to Silicon Valley to talk about Atlanta and our IT future to make people aware of all of our efforts and successes," Reed tells CL. "Then we're listening to folks who've actually made it work and we're scheduling a number of visits for me personally to Silicon Valley, San Francisco, and Palo Alto."

Reed spokeswoman Anne Torres, who's coordinating the trip, says the mayor's Silicon Valley adventures will likely include visits to Twitter, Facebook, Google, Causes, Francisco Partners, and Founder's Fund. In doing so, the mayor hopes he can persuade others to funnel cash back to promising Atlanta-based entrepreneurial efforts.

"In the next five years, I think that the City of Atlanta is going to be the dominant IT city in the southeast," Reed says. "What you're going to see is a constant stream of investment between Atlanta and Silicon Valley."