3Ci Weekly Tech Minute is a weekly installment of Atlanta’s top tech news. Hosted by one of Atlanta’s own tech experts, Titania Jordan, the Weekly Tech Minute is where our city’s tech leaders and enthusiasts turn to receive up-to-date stories about Atlanta’s buzzing tech scene.
It’s been a big month for Atlanta’s tech community. Check out this roundup of the top stories from October from @3Cipeople. #TechCONNECT 
Top Tech Stories
Three Cheers for Atlanta Innovation at Atlanta Tech Week
It’s been a big month for Atlanta. Techstars Demo Day, Venture Atlanta, and Atlanta Startup Battle all took place within a five-day span. Some of the biggest players in the tech ecosystem from around the world were right here in our city. To date, the Venture Atlanta conference has lead to $3.9B in funding raised to startups and $14B in successful exits. Also, we want to send our congrats to smart home startup Inirv as the winner of Atlanta Startup Battle 7.0, taking home $100K in investment from Techsquare Labs’ early-stage venture fund.
If you missed out, head to Twitter and check out the following hashtags: #TechStarATL #VA2019 #AtlantaStartupBattle.
Google for Startups Pops Up in Atlanta
The first Google for Startups Atlanta pop-up took place this October, bringing together 15 Googlers and 40 local startup founders under one roof in Midtown to “help startups in a non-transactional way in their own terms.” Head of Startup Connections at Google for Startups, Amrit Dhir, spent the last six months in Atlanta gathering the most promising founders and tells Hypepotamus, “We selected Atlanta because we’ve been impressed by the strength of the local ecosystem.” Deer says that they hope to make this pop-up a regular occurence in Atlanta to continue empowering and celebrating the growth in the tech ecosystem.
Next Level Innovations Happening in Our State
Georgia-based companies like UPS, Coca-Cola, and NCR are patenting new technologies, and the US Patent and Trademark Office made public for the first time numerous new patent applications. A few of them include a new way to purchase food or drink from a vending machine using a mobile phone, a delivery vehicle with a robot that selectively retrieves packages for delivery without requiring substantial human intervention and a new way to catch crooks at the retail store checkout line.
You Don’t Want to Underestimate Atlanta
This month, Crunchbase’s Mary Ann Azevedo published a comprehensive piece on Atlanta’s emergence as a tech hub. Our city is quietly building a startup environment that local industry players hope will one day rival those of other metro areas when it comes to funding and exits.
Get Paid Faster With Kabbage Payments
Atlanta fintech star Kabbage launches Kabbage Payments to help small businesses get paid faster. Kabbage is now expanding into payment processing as part of its new suite of cashflow management solutions for small businesses and makes getting paid faster as simple as sending a text message. Two-thirds of Kabbage’s more than 200,000 customers rely on invoicing to receive payments today and wait as long as ninety days to be paid. With Kabbage Payments, users are settling invoices as quickly as 24 hours.
BONUS: A Tech Story Headline Roundup
This month, there were simply too many tech stories to choose from, so here are a few more to keep your eye on:
- Tesla Motors is considering Atlanta for a new office that could add 100s of jobs to our city. Get the Story
- Google may be planning significant expansion in its midtown tower. Get the Story
- SignalPath raises $18M in a Series B to optimize clinical trial workflow. Get the Story
- M.I.T. has just announced a $1B plan to create a new college for AI. Get the Story
Atlanta Funding News
Florence
Atlanta-based clinical software trial software startup, Florence, recently raised $7.1M in a Series B financing round led by Fulcrum Equity Partners. According to a recent press release, CEO Ryan Jones stated, “Clinical drug trials are slower and more expensive than ten years ago, halting access to cutting-edge medicines. We are on a mission to fix this.” Over the past five years, Florence has built the largest network of connected clinical trial sites through its eBinders platform. They’ll use this investment round to broaden their product offerings as well as expand its sales, marketing, and customer success teams.
SaaSOptics
Fulcrum Equity Partners lead another funding round for SaaSOptics, adding a $12M Series B to meet demand. The Atlanta-based company says this comes at the tail end of a high-growth 2019, which saw 70% ARR of growth in Q3 over Q2. This funding will be used to scale the sales, marketing, customer success, and engineering teams to meet strong customer demand.
Ekos
Brewery software Ekos raised an $8M Seris A round lead by Noro-Moseley. The Ekos platform currently powers more than 1,700 craft producers in 40 countries around the world. And in the US, they’ve captured about 15% of craft breweries. Ekos plans to add 40 new employees in 2020 to augment its sales, engineering, and marketing teams.
Companies and People on the Move
Hypepotamus’ Holly Beilin is Making Moves
We want to send a huge congrats to both Holly Beilin and Chanel Lee. Chanel is the newly appointed Editor and Chief of Hypepotamus, filling the impressive shoes of Holly Beilin, who’s served in that role for the past three years and is now serving as the Director of Communications and Community at Engage Ventures. We love watching women in tech succeed and are here to support you.
Take a Seat and Scoot Around Atlanta
There’s yet another way to scoot around Atlanta, thanks to Boaz Bikes, a Dallas-based micro-mobility startup. According to Founder, Emil Nnani, their vehicles are inspected daily, have baskets to help carry things, and are the only scooters with turn signals and side mirrors attached to each vehicle to bring peace of mind while you’re riding in the streets. The company has plans to scale up to 500 vehicles and move its headquarters to our city in 2020.
To stay up-to-date with all of Atlanta’s top tech news, be sure to tune in every week by subscribing right here or via the TechCONNECT YouTube channel.
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