A May forum held in conjunction with National Small Business Week was the latest in an ongoing community discussion on the future of downtown Athens. The future just might be a serial entrepreneur who moved to Athens based on an online quiz.

The forum’s goal was to field ideas about what kinds of businesses should be downtown. Service-oriented and retail, of course, but tech companies that can provide competitive salaries with good benefits are crucial—companies like RoundSphere, a local tech firm and startup incubator that hosted the downtown forum, and Docebo, a multinational "Software as Service" (SaS) corporation.

RoundSphere owner Brandon Checketts and his wife, Kelly, moved to Athens in 2007 when, in their search for a reasonable cost of living and moderate climate, they took a quiz on the quirky-looking website findyourspot.com. The list of tech companies Checketts is connected to is impressive. One of them, Sellerlabs, markets Feedback Genius, a highly successful program in what has become a crowded market of software and services designed specifically for Amazon Marketplace sellers.

“Ours was the first software [for automated order confirmation emails] that pulled in carrier tracking numbers,” Checketts says. He grins widely. “The first time I got an email from our service, I was so pleased.”

Right now, the end of the academic year is a big time for BookScouter.com, another of the companies at RoundSphere. Enter a book’s ISBN at the website and get a list of how much each of more than 50 vendors will pay for the book. The company has grown to process more than 1 million book searches a day and has a staff of 10, headed up by Checketts’ brother, Dustin.

The newest company in the group is Snagshout.com, designed to help new products in the Amazon Marketplace garner feedback quickly by providing a platform for sellers to offer a deep discount in exchange for a review. The FAQ on the site makes it clear that the reviews do not have to be positive, but they do have to be honest. “We’re accelerating the process that would happen naturally,” Brandon Checketts says. “Sellers can’t pre-approve buyers. We have a ton of technology built around honesty on the site.”

Alessio Artuffo was at the RoundSphere forum—held in the company’s office space on the second floor of the News Building formerly occupied by the Banner-Herald’s newsroom—as well. He’s the head of the Athens office of Docebo, which sells and services a cloud-based proprietary learning platform software system to large corporations to enable them to provide consistent and trackable training to their employees, often in many different geographic locations. Their customers include Bloomberg, Reuters, Pepperidge Farms and Sharp.

Though tech companies are often touted as one of the most desirable types of daytime businesses for any thriving downtown, Docebo and RoundSphere also present unique challenges for a city the size of Athens. They may only hire a handful of employees at first, but if successful, they can easily grow fast—faster than real estate agents accustomed to working with traditional businesses realize.

After growing out of several shared spaces downtown, Docebo is now in the old public defender’s office across from the Athens-Clarke County Board of Elections on East Washington Street. They had hardly unpacked and moved in when Artuffo began planning yet another expansion.

“After much searching, when we found this place and renovated it, the Realtor said, ‘This should hold you for another three years or so,’” Artuffo says. That was when he realized that fast-growth startups like Docebo bring different challenges to the ecosystem of a downtown. “We grew to over 30 full-time employees and went from 90 to 980 customers in less than three years,” he says.

Artuffo explains that, while it is standard in Athens for landlords to require a long-term lease, that is almost impossible for a fast-growth company. If it’s successful, the company hopes to outgrow the space quickly, and if it’s not, it’s gone. He says he’s also been asked to provide a “personal liability contract” for a property owner, even though this multinational firm is legally a corporation.

But if these challenges can be met, Artuffo imagines a future lunch hour in downtown Athens when many of the employees of, say, 70 companies like Docebo and RoundSphere leave their creative space offices to explore downtown for quick-service food they can take to a green gathering space nearby. Later, after the traditional work day, many might choose to gather again downtown to socialize, in the process supporting more individual businesses and learning from each other.

Both Artuffo and Checketts say they have experienced the creative outgrowth that can happen when a community of smart people share their ideas. “Every time we have people here, we all get smarter,” Checketts says.