Last week, members of the Invest Atlanta team traveled to Austin, Texas for South by Southwest (SXSW), where they promoted the City of Atlanta and laid the groundwork for future collaborations. While at the tech, film, and music festival, the team also attended sessions about the latest trends in tech, including Virtual Reality (VR), blockchain (over 35 sessions!), and Internet of Things (IoT). The team was pleased to find the conference schedule was full of opportunities to engage on dialogue around diversity and inclusion, smart cities, music and entertainment tech, and building investment pipelines, all topics that the Invest Atlanta team is currently engaged in. The knowledge the IA team gained at SXSW will no doubt inform future programs and initiatives.
Noelle London and Sheoyki Jones both participated in informative panel discussions on the Comcast stage. London talked about the state of Atlanta’s startup ecosystem with Holly Beilin of Hypeotamus, Burunda Prince-Jones of Comcast’s The Farm innovation accelerator, and Charlton Cunningham of Startup Atlanta. Jones covered Atlanta’s booming media and entertainment sector with ChooseATL’s Kate Atwood and Blossom Media’s Diamonde Williamson. The recently-launched Creative Industries Loan Fund was a key topic in a discussion about how the City of Atlanta is supporting our independent content creators and creative entrepreneurs.
Several Atlanta-based startups took part in SXSW pitch competitions. PolyPort, a 3D design asset protection company, took home first prize in the “Security and Privacy Technologies” category. Both Gyomo, whose software provides email security protection and Crescendo, who offers performance assessment software powered by AI, were recognized as standouts in their respective categories. Qoins, a former Invest Atlanta International Startup Exchange participant, placed 2nd in Tech.co’s Startup of the Year competition.
The ChooseATL house, hosted by the Metro Atlanta Chamber, was once again a big hit, thanks to informative panel discussions and a guest appearance by T.I. Along with the launch of THEA, the first city-based video streaming platform, the ChooseATL team told the Atlanta story in an effort to show off our city to businesses and the next-generation of talent. Atlanta showed up strong to SXSW 2018, and Invest Atlanta was proud to be a part of it.