Entrepreneurs - Enterprise Innovation Institute

Engage Celebrates 10th Cohort of Entrepreneurs

Five years after its founding, the first-of-its-kind
innovation program is still going strong

Engage celebrated two milestones – five years since its founding and the introduction of the 10^th cohort of enterprise technology startups – in October with its Executive Reception. The reception, held at Cox Enterprises, featured close to 300 people including executives from Fortune 500 companies, startup founders, and investors.

Engage began in 2017 as the first-of-its-kind collaborative innovation program and venture fund to connect startups with leading corporations. It’s a formula that still works today, with active involvement from corporate behemoths including Delta Air Lines, The Home Depot, Invesco, and others that are giving tech entrepreneurs a place at the table.

Discussion by Engage founders, from left, Blake Patton, Marty Flanagan, and G.P. “Bud” Peterson, moderated by Metro Atlanta Chamber President and CEO Katie Kirkpatrick.

To kick off the event, Engage founders and board members Marty Flanagan, president and CEO of Invesco, G.P. “Bud” Peterson, president emeritus of Georgia Tech, and Blake Patton, managing partner of Tech Square Ventures, discussed the program’s origin and the way they deliberately set out to meet the needs of both the tech startups and the corporate community.

“What startups really need is access to customers and markets,” said Patton. “And so that’s what we built the concept of Engage around.”

And the corporations, what do they need that Engage can offer?

They need new ideas and the nimbleness of startups. “I think Engage has done a very nice job of identifying the innovation needs of the companies that are participating and then matching that with the entrepreneurs who are being creative and innovative in the community,” said Patton.

Since its founding, Engage has mentored and invested in 10 startup cohorts, a total of 75 companies. Its portfolio companies have inked 116 customer contracts signed with corporate partners. Engage startups have raised more than $2.7 billion in capital after graduating from the program and employ more than 3,000.

Rachel Carpenter, co-founder and CEO of Intrinio, a financial technology startup from the second Engage cohort, hosted a discussion about enterprise data transformation and ways startups can work with major corporations on that, with Donie Lochan, the managing director, chief technology officer, and global head of technology for Invesco, and Chuck Adkins, senior vice president of information technology at Intercontinental Exchange (ICE).

Keynote speaker Alex Taylor, chair and CEO of Cox Enterprises and Engage Board member, discussed the ways Cox is working with startups. The company has signed 12 contracts with Engage startups, including one with Engage graduate Help Lightning to solve a problem brought on by the pandemic.

“Cox Communications has millions of customers around the country,” Taylor said, explaining that technicians of his company’s cable subsidiary could not go to customers’ homes during the pandemic. In normal times, customers would buy the hardware from Cox and install the television modems and other devices with the technicians’ help.

Now, packets are being sent remotely.

“Not a lot of these people are trained engineers, so they don’t often do it right. When there’s problems, we can’t go into their homes and help them,” Taylor said.

Cox worked with Help Lightning, an Engage portfolio company that uses augmented reality video that enables the cable company to better serve its customers — during the pandemic through today.

“It’s a field services tool. A field services tech is out front of a customer’s home with an iPad. There’s a visual interface, and the customer is holding up the phone, showing the technician what they’re looking at,” Taylor said. “The technician is walking the customer through a two-way interaction when they can’t physically be present.”

Following Taylor, Nammy Vedire, Engage’s director of platform and operations, announced the recipient of the Executive Champion Award, given to corporate partners who exemplify and help accomplish Engage’s mission. The award was presented to Jaimie Clark, head of innovation at Catalyst by Wellstar and the director of innovation and venture strategy for Wellstar Health System.

“Jaimie met with several of our corporate executive teams, understood best practices, and incorporated them into the WellStar Catalyst program, which is this conduit to bring innovation to every corner of the Wellstar Health System,” Vedire said. “In doing so, in the last 12 months, Jaimie has helped five of our startups sign pilots, of which three have now converted to multi-year contracts. That’s an incredible effort.”

Daley Ervin, Engage’s managing director, who was celebrating his last Engage cohort before leaving the position, was also presented with an award to mark his service with Engage since 2018.

To wrap up the evening, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens — a Georgia Tech alum — spoke about his commitment to the city’s tech startup ecosystem. To illustrate the importance of the community, he introduced the city of Atlanta’s first Senior Technology Advisor Donald Beamer. “He will be an ambassador for this ecosystem that helped catapult Atlanta. He will lift up the startup community and be able to answer the questions of venture capitalists,” Dickens said.

Engage’s cohort 10 companies include:

Civic Eagle: Gives policy professionals the tools to more effectively monitor, report, and collaborate on policy work.
Coginiti: A collaborative intelligence company that democratizes access to data, fosters collaboration, and supports building, reusing, and sharing data and analytic assets.
Manifest Climate: Provides businesses with the tools, data, and support they need to identify climate risks and opportunities, track trends, and build competency around climate action.
NameCoach: Uses artificial intelligence-enabled software to solve one problem that can help businesses promote inclusion, belonging, and rapport — name mispronunciation.
Qualytics: Delivers confidence in data with real-time automated anomaly detection and remediation to help improve the accuracy of enterprise decision making.
Tribute: A micro-mentorship platform enhances team collaboration, learning, and productivity in hybrid workplaces.
Workera: This skills intelligence platform is redefining how enterprises understand, develop, and mobilize talent to drive innovation.
Wripple: An agency services platform that matches enterprises to individual freelancers and project teams.

About Engage

Engage is a first-of-its-kind innovation platform comprising category-leading corporations in the Southeast that have joined forces to support startups building the future of enterprise. Engage is designed to promote innovation through a network of connections between startups, corporations, university researchers, and the venture community.

Engage’s corporate partners include Chick-fil-A, The Coca-Cola Company, Cox Enterprises, Delta Air Lines, Georgia-Pacific, Georgia Power Foundation, Georgia Tech, Goldman Sachs, The Home Depot, Honeywell Connected Enterprise, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), Inspire Brands, Invesco, Invest Georgia, UPS, and Wellstar Health System. These corporate partners, along with Tech Square Ventures and the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), provide tools, hands-on support, and resources that help startups develop go-to-market strategies, open doors faster, and transform strategies into action. For more information, visit engage.vc.

Georgia Tech Entrepreneur Pursuing Greener Energy

Sila Nanotechnologies receives $100 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy for battery technology

Entrepreneurs and those who support and nurture them must be tenacious visionaries, possessed with the ability to predict the future. Leaders at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s ATDC and VentureLab demonstrate these skills again and again as they select companies for their programs that hold the promise of changing the world.

Gleb Yushin, a professor in the School of Materials and Engineering and co-founder and chief technology officer of Sila

One such company, Sila Nanotechnologies, an engineered materials company focused on improving energy storage, went through the program a decade ago. Still, Gleb Yushin, a professor in the School of Materials and Engineering and co-founder and chief technology officer of Sila, remembers the impact the experience had on his company.

“I wanted to start a business focused on using materials science to make a global impact, but I had no business expertise,” Yushin said. “So, the support and guidance I received from ATDC and VentureLab were remarkably useful for me. They helped instill confidence in me and my vision of building a battery materials company that would dramatically increase Li-ion energy density with silicon anodes and other material technologies.”

The confidence they instilled, plus the mentors who worked with him on the business side – an area way outside his comfort zone at that time – were the most important parts of working with the entrepreneurship programs, he said.

A rendering of Sila’s new Moses Lake facility

Those early interactions – along with years of hard work and top-notch science – paid off in a huge way for Sila. Recently, the company was awarded $100 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy. The funds, plus private investments, will be used to build out Sila’s new 600,000-square-foot facility in Moses Lake, Washington, where the company will scale manufacturing of its silicon anode materials. Sila anticipates enough production to power 200,000 electric vehicles by 2026.

“It’s so exciting when one of the VentureLab companies makes good,” said Keith McGreggor, director of VentureLab. “It’s why we all do the work we do. Gleb and his partners are changing the world with their battery technology that’s cleaner, less expensive, and more efficient. It’s great to see that rewarded.”

The reward is a result of years of research and work into the science of battery manufacturing, Yushin said.

“We invented a new drop-in battery with replacement silicon-based composite materials that are not only remarkably robust and stable, but also didn’t need to change the way batteries are made. In other words, we made our materials compatible with all the battery manufacturing processes and steps that were used in the past and will likely be used in the future,” Yushin said.

The latest round of funding and the government grant will allow Sila to scale manufacturing and Mercedes-Benz is ready when Sila is. The automaker will use Sila’s anode materials to power its G-Class series electric vehicles, beginning in 2025. The new batteries will deliver a 20% to 40% increase in energy density in their electric vehicles (EVs), which will both increase range and enable faster charges at the same time.

Sila is also working with WHOOP, the health and fitness wearables company, whose devices contain Sila batteries, which deliver roughly a 20% increase in battery energy density with a 33% reduction in device size, he said.

“When working on our anodes, we built the best, most reliant performance solutions to be resilient against supply chain issues,” Yushin said. “The blueprints of Sila’s first auto-scale factory will be used for replicating other silicon-anode material factories in the U.S. and abroad, making the company a major global player in most-advanced green energy technologies. But anode materials are just the beginning. We have a pipeline of other drop-in replacement, supply-chain resilient technologies at different stages of their developments to push the battery performance to new heights.”

About Sila

Founded in 2011, Sila is a next-generation battery materials company with the mission to power the world’s transition to clean energy. Sila shipped the world’s first commercially available silicon anode for lithium-ion batteries in 2021. Sila’s materials drive battery performance enhancements in consumer electronics devices and will power electric vehicles starting with the Mercedes-Benz G-Class series. Committed to American leadership in clean energy production, Sila is scaling its technology at its manufacturing facility in Moses Lake, Washington. Major investors include 8VC, Bessemer Venture Partners, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Coatue, In-Q-Tel, Matrix Partners, Sutter Hill Ventures, and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc.

Engage Celebrates Five Years of Innovation and Entrepreneurship

First-of-its-kind program connects high-growth startups with Fortune 500 companies

Engage, the first-of-its-kind collaborative innovation program and venture fund, celebrates five years of connecting startups with leading corporations. Engage, an affiliate program of the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Enterprise Innovation Institute, combines strategic capital, a startup growth accelerator, Georgia Tech faculty and resources, and a collaborative network of leading global corporations to create a corporate innovation and startup go-to-market accelerator program that has rocketed the Southeast’s emergence as a leading tech hub. Marty Flanagan, president and CEO of Invesco, G.P. “Bud” Peterson, president emeritus of Georgia Tech, and Blake Patton, managing partner of Tech Square Ventures founded the program in 2017. They were joined by nine other founding corporations, including Delta Air Lines, Chik-fil-A, The Home Depot, and UPS.

“As one of the founding corporate partners of Engage, Invesco recognizes the tremendous impact entrepreneurs have on the U.S. economy, and we’re committed to working with the Engage corporate partners to empower their growth in the Southeast region,” said Flanagan. “Through working together with a diverse group of Engage startup founders, we have all benefited from shared innovation, insights into new technology, and invaluable learning opportunities. We look forward to continuing to shape and nurture the growing community of entrepreneurs in Atlanta.”

Blake Patton, managing partner, Tech Square Ventures

“Engage’s aim is to establish Atlanta and the Southeast as the best place in the country for enterprise-focused startups to do business,” said Patton. “Our partners have enabled us to build not only a startup growth accelerator but also an innovation platform that has accelerated corporate innovation and connectivity in the region and helped it to become a premier tech and innovation hub. We are proud that 29 of our startups are headquartered or have team members in Georgia.”

The Engage fund, managed by Tech Square Ventures, invests in companies selected for its Go-To-Market Program. That program, in partnership with Georgia Tech, combines education and one-of-a-kind access to help startups break through the barriers of selling to and partnering with large enterprises.

Engage’s Georgia Tech Faculty Council is comprised of subject matter experts who serve in areas including customer experience, data analytics, supply chain, future of work, and sustainability. They offer advice on which startups should be invited into a cohort and facilitate cross-corporate innovation activities.

“Without a doubt, Engage proves academia can play a significant role in bringing together startups and corporations for innovation,” Raghupathy Sivakumar, the Wayne J. Holman Chair professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the vice president of commercialization and chief commercialization officer for the Institute. “The Engage model of corporate partners, plus startups, plus academia is unparalleled in the country, if not the world. We are actively trying to elevate Engage to even further heights by investing in programs that heavily involve our faculty and students in its activities. We can’t wait to see Engage continue to scale and help propel Georgia Tech as one of the top entrepreneurial universities in the country.”

The support and networking of the Engage program has resulted in tremendous success for Engage companies. Highlights include:

The Mom Project, a marketplace connecting enterprises with working mothers, reached 1 million mothers.
Moth + Flame, a developer of virtual training technology, appeared on the Inc. 5000 fastest-growing private companies in the U.S.
Cloverly, an application programming interface (API) that matches digital transactions to equivalent carbon removal, making transactions carbon neutral in real time.
Verusen, an AI platform to harmonize materials data and predict inventory in manufacturing supply chains.
MetaCX, a network that companies join to manage the expected value from their business, raised a round of $5.1 million, comprised of 14 angel investors, bringing the total capital raised by the company to $33.6 million.

Rachel Carpenter, co-founder and CEO of Intrinio

Rachel Carpenter, co-founder and CEO of Intrinio, a financial technology company and member of the second cohort, would encourage startup leaders who get the chance to go through the Engage program.

“You will receive unprecedented access to some of the largest strategic institutions in the world. We were in one of the early cohorts, and we’re still connected with executives at Intercontinental Exchange, and Invesco, and Goldman Sachs,” she said. “There’s this deep spirit of collaboration. They don’t forget about you and your cohort overnight. They still know who you are, what your technology is, and sometimes years later they come back and re-open the door for you. So doing the program is not just a short-term value. It’s long-term relationships that you’re establishing.”

Despite the success of the last five years, Engage isn’t content to rest on its laurels. Engage looks to expand in the next five years – and beyond, Patton said, into new verticals, while continuing to support its growing portfolio of companies.

About Engage

Engage is a first-of-its-kind innovation platform comprising category-leading corporations in the southeastern United States that have joined forces to support startups and build the future of enterprise. Engage is designed to promote innovation through a network of connections between startups, corporations, university researchers, and the venture community. Engage’s corporate partners include Chick-fil-A, The Coca-Cola Company, Cox Enterprises, Delta Air Lines, Georgia-Pacific, Georgia Power Foundation, Georgia Tech, Goldman Sachs, The Home Depot, Honeywell Connected Enterprise, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), Inspire Brands, Invesco, Invest Georgia, UPS, and Wellstar Health System. These corporate partners, along with the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) and Tech Square Ventures, provide tools, hands-on support and resources that help startups develop go-to-market strategies, open doors faster and transform strategies into action. For more information, visit engage.vc.

T-Mobile, Georgia Tech, and Curiosity Lab Team Up to Fuel 5G Innovation in Drones, Autonomous Vehicles, Robotics, and More

New 5G Connected Future incubator program will support growth and development of 5G entrepreneurs and startups.

Outside picture of Curiosity Lab at Peachtree Corners — Curiosity Labs at Peachtree Corners is home to the 5G Connected Future incubator that will be managed by Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC).

The new 5G incubator is located in the city of Peachtree Corners’ 500-acre smart city technology park, a living lab powered by T-Mobile 5G where more than 8,000 people live or work. The facility features a 25,000 square foot Innovation Center and 3-mile autonomous vehicle test track. T-Mobile has deployed its Extended Range 5G and Ultra Capacity 5G network across the park enabling developers to build solutions in a real-world environment. Here developers will build and test new 5G use cases such as autonomous vehicles, robotics, industrial drone applications, mixed reality training and entertainment, remote medical care, personal health and fitness wearables, and more.

“What a match-up! America’s leading 5G network, the brilliant minds of Georgia Tech and the most advanced living lab in the country — now that’s a powerhouse combination,” said John Saw, EVP of Advanced & Emerging Technologies at T-Mobile. “We cannot wait to see the innovation that occurs as entrepreneurs and developers build the next big thing in 5G backed by these world-class resources.”

Hedshot of ATDC Director John Avery — John Avery is director of ATDC.

The new incubator, managed in collaboration with Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), is an expansion of the T-Mobile Accelerator and part of the Un-carrier’s efforts to fuel 5G innovation. T-Mobile supports numerous initiatives to help startups and entrepreneurs develop, test and bring to market groundbreaking new 5G products and services. T-Mobile Accelerator is an award-winning program founded in 2014 that originated in the smart city corridor of Kansas City.

Companies participating in the 5G Connected Future program will work directly with technology and business leaders at T-Mobile Accelerator, Georgia Tech, and Curiosity Lab as they build, test and bring to market new products and services that unleash the potential of T-Mobile 5G. ATDC is a globally recognized technology incubator. The 5G Connected Future vertical is the fourth of its kind at ATDC and follows other targeted programs in health, retail and financial technologies.

“In addition to the normal startup concerns, entrepreneurs in the 5G space face a unique set of challenges such as regulatory issues at the state and local levels, network security, and integration testing,” said ATDC Director John Avery.

Betsy Plattenberg is executive director of Curiosity Lab.

ATDC brings a unique framework that combines its startup curriculum, coaching, connections, and community, as well as direct access to Georgia Tech resources, research expertise, and student talent, to help entrepreneurs learn, launch, scale, and succeed. In this effort, ATDC will offer programing, recruit and evaluate startups, and hire staff to manage the vertical in Peachtree Corners.

“This collaboration is a great opportunity for ATDC and Georgia Tech, the city of Peachtree Corners and Curiosity Lab, and T-Mobile, a Fortune 50 company, to create a unique collection to work with these companies, refine their ideas into scalable companies, and bring these solutions to market more quickly,” Avery said.

Such a partnership underscores “Georgia Tech’s commitment to enabling tomorrow’s technology leaders, which remains as strong as when ATDC was founded 41 years ago,” said Chaouki T. Abdallah, Georgia Tech’s executive vice president for research. “Innovation cannot take place in a vacuum, which is why entrepreneurs and startups require the knowledge and resources provided through partnerships such as ours.”

“The City of Peachtree Corners and Curiosity Lab continue to affirm our commitment to technology innovation through programs, partnerships and engagements with industry leaders such as T-Mobile and Georgia Tech,” said Betsy Plattenburg, executive director of Curiosity Lab. “These two organizations were instrumental in the launch of Curiosity Lab and our continued collaboration will create opportunities for the next-generation of intelligent mobility and smart city entrepreneurs.”

T-Mobile 5G, A Platform for Innovation
T-Mobile is America’s 5G leader, with the fastest and largest nationwide 5G network. T-Mobile’s Extended Range 5G covers more than 280 million people across nearly 1.6 million square miles – more geographic coverage than AT&T and Verizon combined. With Sprint now part of T-Mobile, the Un-carrier is widening its lead, using dedicated spectrum to bring customers with capable devices download speeds of around 300 Mbps and peak speeds up to 1 Gbps.

With its supercharged 5G network as the foundation, T-Mobile is working to fuel 5G innovation and build the 5G ecosystem. The Un-carrier collaborates with universities and standards bodies to support 5G research and development. In addition to running the award-winning T-Mobile Accelerator, it also operates the T-Mobile Ventures investment fund and is a co-founder of the 5G Open Innovation Lab.

Startups interested in joining the 5G Connected Future program can apply here.

I-Corps South hosts regional summit at Georgia Tech

Keith McGreggor (standing), I-Corps South node co-principal investigator and executive director, greets attendees of the I-Corps South Regional Summit at Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute, April 25, 2018. (Photo: Péralte C. Paul)

The Innovation Corps (I-Corps) South node at the Georgia Institute of Technology hosted a regional summit of 12 universities from the South centered on furthering and encouraging greater commercialization of ideas fostered in university labs and classrooms.

The daylong, April 25 summit, which included schools from North and South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Georgia, was designed to allow the different schools to share best practices and lessons learned from ongoing initiatives and plan growth and development strategies.

“When we say innovation, we often only think of certain parts of the country,” Keith McGreggor, the I-Corps South node co-principal investigator and executive director, told the roughly two dozen attendees. “But there’s a lot of innovation and potential occurring here in Georgia and across the South and we want to continue to foster and develop that.”

The I-Corps program, a public-private partnership program established in 2011 by the National Science Foundation (NSF), connects NSF-funded scientific research with the technological, entrepreneurial, and business communities to help create a stronger national ecosystem for innovation that couples scientific discovery with technology development and societal needs.

The I-Corps South node, established in 2016, is a partnership of Georgia Tech, the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, the University of Alabama in Birmingham, and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Haslam College of Business. I-Corps South works and partners with university students and research faculty at schools in 10 states from the South and the U.S. island territory of Puerto Rico to teach entrepreneurship, support research and innovation. Through this collaboration, the node has the potential to reach more than 500,000 graduate and undergraduate students, and many thousands of the nation’s research faculty at research universities and historically black colleges and universities across the Southeast and Puerto Rico.

To entrepreneurs, I-Corps South seeks to provide consistent instruction on the principles of evidence-based entrepreneurship in the style of I-Corps. Instruction is direct and challenging, keeping in mind the goal of holding entrepreneurs accountable to know their customers. To universities, the node seeks to provide the tools, support, and resources required to launch and maintain high-quality evidence-based entrepreneurship programs across the southeast.

“I-Corps allows you to grow entrepreneurial ecosystems where the entrepreneurs are, at your schools and communities,” McGreggor said. “What we want to do today is share our ideas and explore opportunities to partner with each other to see how we can work together to further build and develop an entrepreneurial ecosystem of the South.”

Center to Aid Bioscience Entrepreneurs

The Georgia Bioscience Commercialization Center, a start-up organization intended to give bioscience entrepreneurs a leg up in business, officially launched its efforts Monday afternoon.

Through a faculty of 23 bioscience business leaders, the nonprofit GBCC will offer free advice to help get new bioscience creations get to market. The experienced executives will offer assistance with things such as reviewing and refining start-up concepts; drafting solid business plans; identifying investors; finding incubator space; and navigating the drug and device regulatory pathways.The GBCC will also provide referrals to providers of services from accounting to sales. For entrepreneurs getting started, all of this is free. Companies listed in the GBCC’s providers directory pay a fee of $950 per year.

One of the local faculty members is Harold Shlevin, Ph.D., a 30-year biosciences-industry executive and researcher, who works at Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) as manager of ATDC-Biosciences. At ATDC, he serves as a startup catalyst advising new bioscience companies within the ATDC and evaluates and guides new and emerging bioscience enterprises that are based on Georgia Tech research innovations as well as others across Georgia.

To read more about the new Georgia Bioscience Commercialization Center, click here.

To read more about Harold Shlevin, click here.

ATDC Company Wins Business Launch Contest

Toomah, an ATDC company based in Atlanta that automates the interviewing process, won the 2010 GRA/TAG Business Launch Competition. Toomah got $50,000 cash and more than $200,000 in donated services from the Atlanta business community.

Two of the three finalists in the fifth annual competition were also ATDC companies: Khu.sh, a music intelligence application company, and Transaction Tree, a green company. The third company, SolidFire, is a cloud computing company. The three will split the remaining $200,000 in pro bono services, a first for the competition.

Judges included Tom Crotty, managing director of Battery Ventures Boston; Stephen Fleming, vice president of the Enterprise Innovation Institute at Georgia Tech; John Glushik, general partner of Intersouth Partners; Boris Jerkunica, chairman of the Atlanta Silverbacks; Hooks K. Johnston, general partner of Valhalla Partners; Mark Koulogeorge, managing general partner of MK Capital; Mark Morel, chairman and CEO of Whoop Inc.; and Alan Taetle, general partner of Noro-Moseley Partners.

To read the entire article, click here.

Startup Accelerator ATDC Celebrates 30th Anniversary

Georgia Tech’s startup accelerator, the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), celebrated 30 years of helping launch and build technology companies with a “Startup Showcase” attended by more than 500 persons on May 24^th. At the event, ATDC added four companies to its long list of graduates.

Georgia Tech President G.P. “Bud” Peterson was the main speaker, reviewing the ATDC’s history and congratulating members of the Committee of Twenty – Georgia Tech alumni whose interest in technology startups during the late 1970s led to formation of the incubator.

“It’s really a pleasure to be here to celebrate this 30-year anniversary and to be able to reflect back on some of the great successes of the ATDC,” Peterson told a crowd of entrepreneurs assembled in the ballroom of the Georgia Tech Hotel. “There are many, many positive things that have resulted from this organization and its interaction with people in this community, the greater Atlanta area, the state of Georgia – and all across the country.”

Stephen Fleming, Georgia Tech vice president and executive director of the Enterprise Innovation Institute, reviewed progress made by the ATDC in expanding membership and increasing program offerings over the past year

“If you are a Georgia technology entrepreneur, we will help you no matter where you are located in the state or what your background is,” he said. “In addition to our brick-and-mortar facilities in Atlanta and Savannah, we are spreading across the rest of the state, which is part of our mandate.”

Nearly a year ago, ATDC opened its membership to all technology companies in Georgia. On the day of the Showcase, ATDC had 321 members. “That makes us the largest technology incubator, as far as I know, in the world,” Fleming added.

The startup accelerator still focuses on companies that are developing new technologies, but no longer emphasizes raising venture capital. That’s because many entrepreneurs are now bootstrapping their operations or have independent sources of funding, Fleming said.

Even with the incubator’s reduced fund-raising focus and the down economy, ATDC companies still raised a total of at least $150 million in venture capital during the past year, Fleming said.

ATDC is also expanding the geographic breadth of its operations beyond its physical incubators in Atlanta and Savannah. At the Showcase, Fleming announced that ATDC would begin offering educational programs in Gwinnett County, along with regular office hours to meet entrepreneurs – though there are no current plans to provide incubator space there.

He also noted that ATDC has resumed its focus on biosciences companies with the hiring of two staff members – Nina Sawczuk and Harold Shlevin – both with long experience in the life sciences industry.

Fleming congratulated representatives from four companies that had met requirements for graduating from the incubator. The four – CommerceV3, Endgame Systems, Izenda Reports and Purewire – joined 120 other companies on a list of ATDC graduates that goes back to 1986.

President Peterson took note of ATDC’s best known graduate: Suniva, which became the Southeast’s first manufacturer of photovoltaic cells in 2009. The firm grew out of research in Georgia Tech’s University Center of Excellence for Photovoltaics Research and Education, which is part of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

“Suniva has created more than 150 clean-energy jobs manufacturing high-efficiency solar cells,” Peterson noted. The company was recently recognized by U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, who called it “the poster child for the new energy economy.”

About the ATDC: The Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) is a startup accelerator that helps Georgia technology entrepreneurs launch and build successful companies. For 30 years, ATDC has helped create millions of dollars in tax revenues by graduating more than 120 companies, which together have raised more than a billion dollars in outside financing. ATDC has provided business incubation and acceleration services to thousands of Georgia entrepreneurs.

Recently, ATDC expanded its mission by merging with Georgia Tech’s VentureLab and with the Georgia SBIR Assistance Program, which are also part of Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute. This change has enabled ATDC to greatly extend its reach to serve more technology companies along multiple growth paths and at all stages of development. ATDC has opened its membership to all technology entrepreneurs in Georgia, from those at the earliest conception stage to the well-established, venture-fundable companies.

Enterprise Innovation Institute

Georgia Institute of Technology

75 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 314

Atlanta, Georgia 30308 USA

Media Relations Contact: John Toon (404-894-6986)(jtoon@gatech.edu).

Writer: John Toon

Georgia Tech’s ATDC: 30 Years Of Supporting Startups

So what if Stephen Fleming threw a party, and everybody came – including Georgia Tech President G.P. “Bud” Peterson? That was just about the experience at Monday’s ATDC Startup Showcase, which doubled as both the 2010 commencement event for a new class of graduates, and a celebration of the ATDC’s 30-year anniversary. In addition to featuring more than 40 ATDC member companies, the Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center was filled with investors, professors, entrepreneurs and local startup celebs. It was an afternoon of innovation wrapped up by a special edition of the monthly Startup Drinks event – truly something for everyone who attended… And as if on-cue for the anniversary, the ATDC was also recently named one of the “Ten Technology Incubators Changing the World” by Forbes Magazine – alongside such luminaries as the new-generation Y Combinator, and the world-renowned Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Forbes noted the ATDC has launched more than 120 companies over the last 30 years and has helped raise more than $1B in outside funding for member companies.

To read the full TechDrawl story, click here.

ATDC Featured in Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine

The Advanced Technology Development Center celebrated its 30th birthday by launching four more companies during a May ceremony.

Since starting in 1980, the center, which incubates businesses, has had 120 graduating businesses that have created more than 4,000 jobs in Georgia. It has generated an estimated $13 billion in revenues and more than $100 million in profits. Stephen Fleming, Phys 83, ATDC director and vice president of Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute, thanked the state, ATDC employees and volunteers for their support over the years.

To read the full article in the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine, click here.