Author

Andrew Sharpe
March 09, 2026

Hey Athens.

I'm Andrew, the owner of Athens Scoop. Over 7,000+ people read our weekly newsletter about life in this town. About ~800 of you have told us you own a business here, and this is a email just for you to keep you connected to the entrepreneurial side of town.

Everything here is free. I want to help Athens businesses grow, and I think the best way to do that is to get us all in the same room and talking to each other. The businesses that thrive here are the ones that are connected.

Here’s edition two:

Athens Scoop Business Meetup

I'm launching a monthly, in-person meetup for Athens business owners. Expect to see stuff like:

  • Business Workshops (Marketing, AI, etc)

  • Lunches (fun, not uptight networking)

  • Socials (Happy hours, mixers)

  • Exclusive Dinners (cool people only)

All around the area. I want to connect business owners and grow together as this economy gets more and more volatile.

Know of (or have) a place an event should be at? Restaurant? Venue? Reply (seriously). We’d love to partner with you.

Terry College Gets Its Newest Dean

Santanu Chatterjee was officially named the 13th dean of UGA's Terry College of Business this week, effective April 1. He's been on the Terry faculty since 2001 and served as interim dean since last summer after Benjamin Ayers moved into the provost role.

With a new medical school and nursing school arriving in fall 2026 at UGA, Chatterjee is building what he calls a "business-healthcare platform" rooted in Terry's strengths in analytics and economics.

If Terry starts producing more graduates trained at the intersection of business and healthcare, that pipeline feeds directly into local clinics, practices, and health-adjacent businesses.

Terry has over 10,000 students enrolled. Many of those students become your customers, your interns, your full employees, and eventually your peers as business owners. He’s a new big name to be following in Athens.

Meta just quietly put an AI agent called Manus inside your Ads Manager. If you run Facebook or Instagram ads for your business, it's already there. Most Athens business owners haven't noticed it yet.

Here's how to find it: Open Ads Manager, click Tools in the left sidebar, look for Manus AI. Connect your ad account (free), then ask it a plain-language question like "Which ad set had the highest cost per result last month?" It pulls the data and builds the report for you. No spreadsheets.

The real win for local businesses is competitor research. Manus connects to Meta's Ad Library, so you can ask it to show you what ads other businesses in your category are running in Athens. Their creative, their copy, how long each ad's been live. Ads running for months are almost certainly profitable, which tells you what messaging is actually working in your market.

One caveat: early testers say it occasionally gets numbers wrong. Treat it like a smart intern, not autopilot. Verify anything that looks off before acting on it.

Free to start. Already inside the platform you're paying for. Worth 10 minutes to connect and ask your first question.

That's Edition 2. If you know something I should cover, whether it's a business opening, closing, hiring, expanding, or doing something worth paying attention to, reply to this email. I read all of them. If you’re interested in sponsoring this newsletter or the main Athens Scoop one, same thing, just reply.

We also built a free business directory at athenscoop.com/directory for Athens business owners. Your listing gets seen by our 6,000+ readers and gives your business an SEO boost with 5-10 backlinks to our site. No cost to join. Let us know at the bottom of that website and we'll get you set up.

Talk soon.