The Value of Startup Hubs
Recently Techstars announced its inaugural class in Atlanta. Techstars is one of the top accelerator programs in the country, so the Switchyards Downtown Club team was super excited that they had teamed-up with Cox to launch a program in Atlanta. At Switchyards we support all efforts that help our local startup ecosystem succeed and Techstars is one of the best in the nation.
When the Techstars Atlanta class was announced, something caught our eye that we thought was worth a blog post…all four Georgia-based companies are members of Atlanta-based startup hubs. While Techstars Atlanta’s first class is ten companies, only four are based in Georgia — a goal of the program was to bring new talent into the city.
About six months ago we wrote a blog post about the emergence and growing influence of the three main startups hubs in Atlanta — Atlanta Tech Village, Tech Square (at Georgia Tech) & Switchyards. Our belief is that these physical communities mimic the kind of startup density that causes other, more mature, startup cities to produce successful startups. Each physical community becomes the center of gravity for founders, team members & investors, greatly accelerating the progress of startups.
Here are the four Georgia-based startups…
Bark (ATDC members) — Bark protects children by detecting messages that contain cyberbullying, sexting and signs of depression or suicidal thoughts using NLP and machine learning techniques to maintain a child’s privacy and preventing parents from having to spend hours reading their activity.
LaaSer (ATV members) — Thousands of lives are lost each year due to incorrect location information being sent to 911 operators over existing mobile phone network technology. Calls are often routed to the wrong jurisdiction, address and latitude and longitude information are often wrong or not provided at all, and people lose their lives or suffer more than they had to as a result. Our company and our products were created for the sole purpose of solving this problem.
Real Meal Delivery (Switchyards members) — Skip the stress of meal planning and grocery shopping! Fresh, made-from-scratch meals are prepared daily by our chef. Just order by 4PM and let your family enjoy the hot, fresh food delivered to your door.
Sequr (ATV members) — Sequr is the first ever visitor management system for communities using call boxes. They increase security by replacing permanent PIN codes with dynamic, time-sensitive PIN codes. The best thing about Sequr? They can do remote setup on any callbox anywhere in the world.
If you are looking for evidence that startup hubs can have an impact on the success of your startup, look no further than the very competitive Techstars Atlanta program — of all the local startups that they could have chosen, 100% were connected to a local startup hub.
If you are a startup founder in Atlanta, do your best to be involved in one (or all) of these startup communities. Only 1% of startups obtain any meaningful traction or outside funding — these startup hubs greatly increase those odds.
Congratulations to Techstars, Cox Enterprises and the ten startup selected for the inaugural class in Atlanta. The efforts happening in our startup hubs and programs like this is what will put Atlanta on the national startup map!
