📬 Southern Startup Report: July 12 — July 30, 2018

8 min readJul 31, 2018

The Southern Startup Report is a twice-monthly, curated newsletter covering the latest tech startup happenings in the American Southeast. It is produced by LookFar, a New Orleans-based software development studio. Subscribe here to get the SSR delivered to your inbox.

Here in the hot & humid South, I’m sure I’m not alone in saying I can’t wait for this summer to be over. As fall rolls around, we’ll not only have pumpkin lattes and sweater weather to look forward to, but also a fresh crop of startup related events.

Kicking off the fall entrepreneurial season will be 36|86 Entrepreneurship Festival in Nashville, August 29–30. Go for the networking, but stick around for the growth-oriented panels and speakers like Atlanta Ventures’ David Cummings and Backstage Capital’s Arlan Hamilton. The organizers recently announced an expansion of the event’s minority, veteran and women’s participation with the support of FedEx, which will offer 100 scholarships to attend 36|86.

I can’t wait to see what this fall has in store for Southern startups!

~ Mallory Whitfield, Director of Marketing at LookFar, a New Orleans-based software development studio.

New Orleans, LA — The city’s most well-funded startup, Lucid, has hired a new Chief Technology Officer, Rick Pittenger, who brings 22 years experience in software development and service engineering to the company. Biotech wunderkind Instapath took home yet another win recently, as the latest Louisiana recipient of a National Science Foundation Small Business Technology Transfer grant, while startup Haberdashe won $1,000 at the inaugural NOLAVATE Black pitch competition earlier this month. A recent report from security company Coronet named the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport one of the most cyber-secure in the country.

Atlanta, GA — Startup accelerator program Techstars Atlanta has narrowed down a field of 500+ applicants to 10 early-stage companies for their third cohort, focusing primarily on startups based in the Southeast. The Atlanta-based husband and wife founder team of HelixAI have joined the prestigious Techstars Alexa Accelerator sponsored by Amazon, while startup Trackter took home the Pitch Off prize at the recent 1st Annual AGTech Conference of The South. Atlanta-based clinical trial platform Aces Health was recently acquired by a West Coast venture development firm, and venture capital firm the JumpFund has raised its second fund of $5.2 million, more than double their first fund, with plans to continue focusing on female-led startups in the southeastern region.

Austin, TX — Austin accelerator program Sputnik ATX has announced five startups that will participate in its inaugural summer cohort: TeacherTalent, LAMIK, AI Maps, BoardMaps, and NewChip. Austin chat-based payment software startup Alive5 was recently chosen as one of 10 global startups accepted into the Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs Accelerator, powered by Techstars. LendingTree recently announced an agreement to acquire ATX startup Student Loan Hero, while the U.S. Army announced that Austin has been selected as the site of their forthcoming Futures Command center, which will be responsible for designing high-tech applications and weapons for the future.

Birmingham, AL — Fresh off the heels of Birmingham’s annual Innovation Week, the city is making news for its burgeoning startup scene. Auto racing software startup APEX Pro took home the $100K seed prize, as well as the $1,000 audience choice award, at EDPA’s Alabama Launchpad imerge 2018 startup competition. Global Inspections of Mobile won $50K in the concept category. Fledging, a student-led startup from the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Commercialization Accelerator, recently moved into Innovation Depot to focus on continued growth, and a Birmingham entrepreneur who works with disabled individuals is launching MoovMo, a new ridesharing service that will focus on this underserved population.

Charleston, SC — Health-tech startup ALIS Health has become the first South Carolina based company to be accepted into the prestigious Cedars-Sinai accelerator, powered by Techstars. Over the next three months, co-founders Amy Domangue and Kerranna Williamson will work with mentors from the Cedars-Sinai and Techstars networks to launch a technology solution that helps clinicians order appropriate lab tests for patients.

Jackson, MS — The state of Mississippi and startup Vizaline are locked in a battle royale that’s making national headlines. The Mississippi Board of Licensure for Professional Engineers and Surveyors is suing Vizaline to return all the money it’s received so far for its technology-enabled land survey services, which state regulators say are illegal. Vizaline is countersuing, claiming a violation of its rights under the First Amendment.

Little Rock, AR — The third annual Venture Center FinTech Accelerator program kicked off recently, with a cohort of 10 fintech startups selected from a pool of 281 globally-based applicants. Jeff Standridge, Chief Catalyst for the Conductor and Co-founder of Cadron Capital Partners, recently released a second book in his series, The Innovator’s Field Guide, dedicated to giving startup founders, business owners and investors fresh and relevant, bite-sized ideas and stories to spark innovation and creative improvement within their businesses.

Nashville, TN — The Nashville Entrepreneur Center is welcoming seventeen healthcare startups for their 2018 Project Healthcare Portfolio program. Eight of the 17 startups are from the South, including New Orleans’ own RDnote. As CEO Charlie Brock prepares to step down from his post at Launch Tennessee later this year, he’s making a final push to ensure the success of startups in the state. He recently formally presented a five-year strategic plan and roughcut budget for the organization, asking for $44M in direct funding from the state, spread across five fiscal years, to support entrepreneurship efforts in the region.

Raleigh-Durham, NC — The local chapter of Bunker Labs, a national nonprofit organization built by military veteran entrepreneurs with the mission of empowering other military veterans and military spouses to become leaders in entrepreneurship and innovation, recently won two awards including being voted best chapter of the year by the 22 nationwide chapters at a recent Bunker Labs national conference. Bunker Labs RDU was founded in 2015 by Army veteran Dean Bundschu and currently hosts events across North Carolina in Charlotte, Greensboro, Fayetteville and Wilson.

Tampa, FL — As part of a new collaboration with Dreamit Ventures, five of Tampa Bay Wave’s healthtech companies — Articulate Labs, Metasense Analytics, Resility Health, Verapy and SynsorMed — were selected for Dreamit’s recent HealthTech Virtual Pitch Event. Tampa Bay Wave also announced two new Entrepreneurs-in-Residence recently: Lance Raab, Investor-Partner at Florida Funders and Santo Cannone, former COO of ConnectWise.

“In the startup universe, there is no such thing as perfect.

I’m an attorney; law is a precise art, and that is the mindset I brought to GotSpot. I spent months trying to get everything on the platform just right before it hit me that building a startup is all about continuous improvement — “just right” doesn’t exist. So I stopped asking “is this exactly how I want it?” and started asking “is it getting better with each iteration?” That’s my new metric for success.”

~ Reda M. Hicks, Co-Founder and CEO of GotSpot, Inc., Houston, TX

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