Shannon Denton, former global CEO of Razorfish, has joined Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center as an entrepreneur-in-residence.

EIRs are successful businesspeople who work one-on-one with ATDC portfolio companies. They guide and advise those companies, and leverage their own track records of developing and selling startups.

“Shannon brings a wealth of experience and adds to our deep bench of EIR talent here at ATDC,” said Frank Tighe, ATDC’s lead EIR. “He is committed to helping entrepreneurs learn, launch, scale, and succeed and will be a valuable asset and resource to our companies.”

In addition to mentoring duties, EIRs also are tasked with identifying and recruiting startups into ATDC’s Signature and Accelerate portfolios. Those companies designated ATDC Signature are the ones deemed most ready to succeed, get investors, and thrive as stand-alone enterprises.

“I love the energy of the startup world and was doing quite a bit of advising and investing in Atlanta, and ran into a few ATDC companies that I thought were quite innovative,” Denton said, explaining he likes the diversity of ATDC’s portfolio companies, as well as the incubator’s overall economic development mission.

“I want to bring a unique perspective on how to “think and go big,” and I am all about creating market-leading companies that grow fast and change the world.”

Denton spent 15 years at Razorfish, where he played a key role in growing the company to one of the largest and most innovative digital agencies in the world, as ranked by industry analysts such as Gartner and Forrester Research.

Over the past year, Denton has been an active advisor, mentor and investor to Atlanta’s startup community, which has benefited from his diverse background in business, innovation, and technology.

In his 28-year professional career in technology and professional services, Denton led several high-growth businesses or business units, raised more than $40 million in venture capital, and either sold and acquired several businesses, either as CEO or top member of the executive team.

A graduate of Texas Tech University with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, Denton was a former product architect and software engineer, and earlier in his career, led the development of several software products from scratch as product manager, a hands-on architect, and full-stack developer.