If you haven't gotten pumped for our inaugural 50 on Fire event, this list is surely about to start the fire.
Today, we’re officially announcing the 50 people and companies that are crushing it in Atlanta. Over the next few weeks, we’ll spotlight a few of these companies in stories and in our newsletter, The Beat.
We invite you and your team, friends, family – and anyone that’s interested or invested in Atlanta startups – to join us at a big party stocked with tasty bites, cocktails, craft beer and wine at the rooftop at Ponce City Market on June 6. At the event, we’ll announce the 11 people and companies, one from each category, that a panel of esteemed judges have selected as the Inno Blazer winners (AKA category winners). You can get your tickets here.
We love celebrating entrepreneurs and startups that are really killing it in the local ecosystem, which is why we're announcing our 50 on Fire now and hosting an event in their honor.
So what exactly makes a company or person "on fire?" Using nominations from you, the readers, we’re showcasing startups that have had a banner year — people and companies with new funding, recent product launches, hot hires and innovative approaches to solving problems.
Let's drop this list ...
B2B Technology and Software
Gimme Vending – Gimme Vending aims to ease the process of restocking vending machines. “The Gimme Key,” a small three-inch device, plugs into vending machines and allows companies and drivers to more accurately identify what vending machines and items need to be restocked. The key connects with a mobile app to provide an up-to-date and easy-to-read interface on mobile devices. The company won “Best B2B Startup” in the Atlanta Startup Awards 2018 and launched their micro markets (self checkout kiosk store) inventory management app. Gimme Vending has recently released AutoDrive — a video inventorying software where the user simply takes a video of the products in front of them. The company has raised a total of $450,000 in funding, according to Crunchbase.
Goodr – Goodr.co is an Atlanta startup that connects those in need with food and eliminates food waste through a food management platform. In 2018, the ATDC Accelerate portfolio company raised a $1 million seed round and scored corporate partners, including Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Ponce City Market, the Georgia World Congress Center and Turner Broadcasting. Founder Jasmine Crowe was awarded a grant from Spanx by the Sara Blakely Foundation and the Center for Civic Innovation. Goodr has also won a $5,000 grant at The United State of Women’s 2018 Summit and was a showcase company at this year’s Venture Atlanta. In October, Goodr was voted the Best Social Impact Startup at the Atlanta Startup Awards.
OnPay – OnPay provides payroll software to over 10,000 clients. Using an SaaS model, clients start by simply signing up for a subscription on the OnPay website. The company launched its OnPay Partner Program for accountants in November and has raised a total of $3.6 million.
ParkMobile – ParkMobile, a provider of smart parking and mobility solutions, has been named to the Inc. 5000, the Deloitte Fast 500, the TAG Top 40, the ACG Georgia Fast 40, the Entrepreneur360, and the Atlanta Business Chronicle's Pacesetter list. Additionally, the company won the 2018 Stevie Awards for “Most Innovative Tech Company” and “Best Integrated Mobile Experience.” CEO, Jon Ziglar, received the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the Southeast Region, and as of recently, ParkMobile was selected as a “Best Place to Work” by the Atlanta Journal Constitution. The company has raised a total of $6.3 million to date.
STORD – STORD Inc. is a supply chain startup that connects customers with available warehousing and distribution. It recently raised $12.4 million in funding, bringing their total raised to $14.8 million. The Georgia Tech CREATE-X startup has doubled revenue, tripled headcount and increased purchasing from their biggest Fortune 500 customer by a factor of eight.
SalesLoft – Recently hailed by CB Insights and The New York Times as a startup on track to become one of the next billion-dollar unicorns, SalesLoft is a sales engagement platform with more than 2,000 customers. Major clients include Square, MuleSoft, Alteryx and Dell.
B2C/C2C
Farah Allen, The Labz – The Labz is an Atlanta startup that helps artists protect their music while they collaborate. It's an ATDC Accelerate member and one of several alumni startups from The Farm, a Comcast NBCUniversal and Boomtown accelerator collaboration. The company also participated in the BIG Incubator program and was strategically involved with SXSW and A3C Festival and Conference. Since its inception, the startup has received $50,000 in funding from The Farm and angel investors and has plans to launch a mobile app next year. The LABZ also won a $10,000 grant at the Fall 2018 Startup Runway and co-founder Farah Allen was awarded AJC’s 2018 Woman Of The Year in Technology.
Roadie – Roadie is an on-the-way delivery service that allows drivers to use their unused capacity. Roadie's community currently has 120,000 drivers and coverage to 89 percent of all U.S. households. Since its launch, delivery and logistics giants UPS and Delta have partnered with Roadie. In February, the startup closed a $37 million oversubscribed Series C funding round, including investments from The Home Depot, Warren Stephens and Eric Schmidt’s TomorrowVentures. That brought the company's total funds raised to $62 million.
Contender Brands – Contender Brands is a product development company that created the the get-to-know-you conversation card game Cocktail Farty. After launching the product online in 2017, it sold out online and was recognized as an "Amazon Choice" product. The game was picked up by numerous independent retailers in 2018 and was included in the Grammy gift bags. Later in 2018, Contender Brands added four additional game concepts – Whine Barrel, Keg O’ Cards, Brew-aHa!, and KIC-Start (Kids in Conversation) to the portfolio. Over holiday 2018, CB sold out of four of five concepts, was picked up by numerous new retailers in January 2019 and in 2019, is set to launch three additional concepts to the line. Contender Brands received a Mom’s Choice award and Tillywig Top Fun award in 2019 for the line of games.
Jody Stephenson, SitterTree – Atlanta-based SitterTree, a babysitter request and scheduling tool that connects parents with top mom-rated sitters, expanded its services to Athens, Ga. in early 2019. The startup also launched an expanded website with new features to make finding nearby sitters easier. Jody Stephenson, founder and CEO, launched SitterTree when she was a sophomore at Oglethorpe University and has grown the company to serve more than 2,000 families. Because of Jody's leadership, SitterTree’s sitters made nearly $1 million in babysitter wages last year. The company has grown significantly over the last three years, and their sitters still average 97 percent 5-star ratings from Atlanta moms.
Creative Content
Skillshot Media – An esports production studio, Skillshot Media opened a 16,000-square-foot office in May 2018 dedicated to running esports tournaments and creating esports productions. Skillshot runs professional esports leagues for Smite and Paladins and works with games from other publishers (such as Halo and CS:GO) to create turnkey esports solutions. In November 2018, Skillshot partnered with DreamHack — one of the largest gaming conventions in the world — to hold Hi-Rez Expo at DreamHack Atlanta. Due to Skillshot's involvement, their attendance increased 41 percent over the previous year. This resulted in more than 31,000 event attendees, and more than 10 million people watching the SMITE and Paladins World Championships online.
Fern – Fern, an Atlanta-based animation and design studio, is working with tech companies around the world, and in Atlanta, to convey their messages, values and ideas in visual ways. Co-founder, Animation Director and Illustrator James Mabery has focused on creative work for nearly 14 years with big name clients such as AT&T Inc., Nike, Under Armour and Xbox One. The company has grown by 80-100 percent year-over-year in the past three years.
Foundry 45 – Foundry 45 is one of the largest immersive tech companies in the industry, with more than 200 AR and VR client experiences. The company’s client roster includes global Fortune 100’s such as Delta Airlines, Coca-Cola, IBM/The Weather Company, AT&T, John Deere and U.S. Bank. Since moving their office to Georgia State University’s Creative Media Industries Institute in November 2017, the team has made it their mission to connect students emerging from Georgia’s creative collegiate system to the world of mixed reality. In addition to more than doubling their size over the last year and a half, the company recently added a new female partner and multiple women in developer roles.
Futurus – Futurus specializes in the development of AR and VR experiences for enterprise. The company has increased earnings by 400 percent year-over-year for the past four years. Its staff grew three times in 2018 and is continuing to grow in 2019. The company’s full-time workforce is 50 percent women in order to foster a diverse workplace.
Crypto/Blockchain
SupPorter – SupPorter is the “Kickstarter for political campaigns and nonprofits." This Atlanta Tech Village startup, founded by four brothers, began raising for a $1 million ICO in fall of 2018 and uses blockchain technology to fill the gap in campaign and nonprofit donation campaigns that allow money to go unaccounted for. The brothers hope to reduce bank processing fees normally associated with donations, increase transparency, better financial reporting and open the door for digital currencies to operate in political funding.
Jagruti Solanki, Aprio – Jagruti Solanki, partner at Aprio, has been instrumental in the development of blockchain accounting best practices and the launch of Aprio's blockchain services group -- one of the Top 50 CPA firm in the USA with over 500 employees, serving companies globally. Solanki and her team are pioneers in blockchain accounting having provided tax, audit, audit readiness and consulting services to companies on the blockchain for more than five years. Jagruti speaks at blockchain conferences across the U.S. providing companies with insights, best practices and pitfalls related to blockchain accounting, audit, tax, regulatory, valuation and cyber security risk considerations. In 2018 alone, she has spoken at over 20 conferences and received the AICPA’s Innovative Practitioner of the Year Award for her work on blockchain accounting. She also won the award for Business Development of the year in December 2018 at Aprio. In October 2018, she was also recognized as Innovative Women in Blockchain during the Atlanta Blockchain Week.
Storj – Storj, a blockchain-based decentralized cloud storage platform, came onto the tech scene in 2015 and appears to be the older brother among blockchain companies in Atlanta. Storj (pronounced “storage”) is backed by notable security executives of other Atlanta startups Ionic Security and Pindrop Security, as well as Google Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures and Techstars.
Cybersecurity
Bess Hinson – Bess Hinson serves as the chair of legal firm Morris, Manning & Martin's Cybersecurity & Privacy Practice. Her primary concentrations include cyber and data risk management and governance, breach preparedness and response, crisis management and global data privacy compliance. In the past year, Bess has provided cybersecurity and privacy advice to more than 100 companies. She launched the Atlanta Women in Cybersecurity Roundtable and has grown the Roundtable’s membership from an initial list of 12 members to 75 women professionals. She’s also on the Young Lawyer Editorial Board of The American Lawyer, a member of the Young Women Leaders Forum of Atlanta and a member of the the Georgia Chamber Innovation and Technology Committee and Cybersecurity Working Group.
Evident ID – Evident ID's platform enables identity and credential verifications without the risk and liability of holding personal information. In October 2018, Evident announced a partnership with Marsh Global to develop the first-ever blockchain-based verification solution to help streamline the process of on-boarding sharing economy workers. In February 2019, Evident announced its international expansion with a new office in Kraków, Poland. The company also has plans to triple its headcount in the next year.
MailMosh – MailMosh is a cybersecurity startup that helps customers protect their email inboxes from spammers and scammers. The company is innovating the way email is secured, and it reached the second round of our Tech Madness competition.
risk3sixty – risk3sixty, a cybersecurity consulting and IT audit firm, has grown more than 100 percent in the last 12 months. Earlier this year, the company launched an innovative vulnerability management platform, Phalanx. The company was also named a finalist among the Atlanta Business Chronicle's Pacesetter Award.
Government, Advocacy & Education
Barry Etra, RAISE Forum – Barry Etra is behind the concept and programming of the RAISE Forum, a bi-annual event that brings together startups and investors from across the southeast -- fostering collaboration among the region's entrepreneurial ecosystem. The RAISE Forum is now an integral piece of the Entrepreneurship program at Emory's Goizueta Business School. RAISE began in 2015 and has funded 13 companies, all of which remain in the southeast; thus fulfilling the goal of keeping companies local by funding them at higher levels locally. Etra plans and leads the bi-annual RAISE Forum event, bringing together more than 36 companies and 165 investors since inception.
GreenPrint – GreenPrint, a provider of reduced emissions and sustainability programs, hit a milestone in 2018 by offsetting emissions on over 1 billion gallons of fuel -- the equivalent to powering over one million homes' electricity use for an entire year. The company plans to add 20 employees just this year and anticipates tripling that to 65 by the end of 2020. As one of Atlanta's Pacesetter winners, GreenPrint's revenue has grown 300 percent from 2017 to 2018. GreenPrint's programs have enabled clients and their customers to invest in renewable energy projects, offsetting over 4 million metric tonnes of carbon and planting over 300,000 trees. The company was named a Top 40 Innovative Technology Company by TAG and works with more than 4,500 retail petroleum locations, 80,000 corporate fleets with over 1 million vehicles and 1,000 hotels across 13 countries worldwide.
Jackie Davis, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Institute at Georgia State University – Davis started working on the entrepreneurship offerings of Georgia State University in 2015. The university’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Institute was established in 2016 to prepare Georgia State students to be entrepreneurs and innovators in their chosen fields, by helping existing companies scale or starting new ones. Davis has helped connect ENI with the local tech community.
Stablegold Hospitality LLC – Stablegold Hospitality is a real estate investment company that specializes in affordable accommodations for low- and no-income individuals and families. What started in 2011 as one rundown hotel is now a business with about 1,500 rental units in metro Atlanta, which include seven independently operated extended stay hotels and single-family residential housing. The company currently employs more than 100 people.
Tammy Carson, Flatiron School – Flatiron School, a coding and software engineering school, opened its first Atlanta location in 2018. Tammy Carson, the Atlanta campus director, has led the local initiative to help empower those who might otherwise not have had access to tech and coding resources.
Healthcare & Medicine
ExamMed – ExamMed provides doctors and patients with access to telemedicine and on-demand virtual healthcare services, allowing them to interact virtually. Since its inception in 2015, ExamMed’s technology has been incorporated into hundreds of doctors’ offices across the nation and has been made available to over 100,000-plus patients, resulting in thousands of virtual appointments and hours of care.
MedShape, Inc. – MedShape designs orthopedic devices that can transform and adapt inside the body. In 2018, the company reported 50 percent sales growth with the company's core foot and ankle products. The startup closed a round of private equity financing to accelerate product development activities and had two clinical studies published in peer-reviewed journals.
Oncology Analytics – Oncology Analytics, a health care data company that helps doctors and health insurance plans use science, technology and data to provide cancer treatment to patients, relocated its headquarters to Atlanta in 2018 and raised $21 million in a funding round. In the last 12 months, the company has doubled its client base.
Paul Bennett, Micro C Imaging – Micro C Imaging designs hand-held X-ray machines for better visibility and less radiation for orthopedic doctors. The startup has raised $4 million in funding from private investors and physicians, most notably from Max Andrew Wiener, the owner of a large manufacturing business in Detroit. The ATDC company is a grant recipient of the annual Atlanta Metro Export Challenge and was awarded an InnoVenture Award for best health seed-stage company by the Atlanta Business Chronicle earlier this year. The company hopes to receive FDA approval shortly after completing a clinical trial at Yale. Bennett has lead the engineering group of Micro C, and built a 15 person team from the ground up.
Rachel McCrickard, Motivo – Rachel McCrickard, a licensed marriage and family therapist, was frustrated by the process of the 'path to licensure' for anyone in the field for clinical psychology, therapy, or social work. To earn her 200 hours in Georgia, it took nearly 800 hours of driving back-and-forth from Chattanooga to Atlanta and around $8,000 in personal expense. In 2017, McCrickard set to work building her own digital platform where those seeking licensure could find a supervisor in their state but not have to drive to meet them. Motivo was born and accepted into the Atlanta TechStars class of 2018-2019. Since then, McCrickard has scaled Motivo to serve more than 80 supervisees and hopes to be at 800 by the end of 2019. The original Motivo platform was hosted via Shopify but through TechStars, McCrickard and her team built their own product that officially launched in March. Now with Motivo’s graduation from TechStars on the horizon, McCrickard is working on her seed round of funding.
Fintech
Brian Dally, GROUNDFLOOR – GROUNDFLOOR, a real estate investment platform based in Atlanta, has raised a total of $13.8 million in capital and reports it has reached a 64 percent increase in year-over-year-revenue. The startup offers real estate debt investments to non-accredited investors, allowing individuals to invest in private capital markets. Founder and CEO Brian Dally has 15 years of experience building disruptive technology startups that span stints in Silicon Valley, Boston, London and the North Carolina Triangle region. Previously, he led the launch of Republic Wireless to take on the big four cellphone carriers to international acclaim.
DataSeers – Launched in 2017 in a local startup incubator, Tech Alpharetta, DataSeers is a fintech startup solving data issues faced by financial institutions in areas of reconciliation, compliance, fraud and analytics. Led by the idea that there is a simple solution for even the most complex problem, DataSeers founder Adwait Joshi wanted to use his 15 years of experience in the payments space and invest his energy in helping banks and payments companies with their back-office operations to make them more productive and more successful. In the last 6 months, DataSeers has begun to establish its own international presence by taking on overseas clients and opened its first offshore office in Mumbai, India, to assist growing business across the APAC region. On the heels of a second profitable year in a row, the company has been named one of the Top 40 Innovative Technology Companies in Georgia by the Technology Association of Georgia. In December 2018, FinanSeer was voted the ‘Best Gadget’ at the 5th Anniversary Celebration Gala hosted by Alpharetta Chamber of Commerce. LexisNexis awarded DataSeers for creating a ‘Truly Unique Solution’ which utilizes their HPCC Technology.
LendingPoint – LendingPoint uses big data and machine learning to assess the risk of its borrowers. As a result, LendingPoint provides more performing loans to non-prime customers -- helping their borrowers improve their credit profiles at the same time. Since making its first loan in 2015, LendingPoint has funded more than $1 billion in personal unsecured loans. LendingPoint was named the fastest growing company in metro Atlanta in 2018 by the ABC, and was named the second fastest growing company in its size category in Georgia by the ACG’s Fast Forty awards. LendingPoint secured more than $1.2 billion in financing between August 2017 and February 2019, including two senior credit facilities arranged by Guggenheim Securities and two mezzanine financing deals led by Paragon Outcomes Management LLC.
NOW Corp – NOW Corp, a B2B payments company, successfully completed $100 million bond securitization last year, which gives it the capital to process almost $1 billion each year in transactions. This woman-owned business created the first payment system which enable a business to get paid immediately in a way that feels like accepting a credit card for payment (no loan or factoring) even when a card is not offered and the customer wants to pay later.
Steady – Steady is an “income-building” platform that provides workers in the gig economy with flexible on-demand jobs and financial services that fit their needs. In August, the startup raised $9 million in a round led by Propel Venture Partners. The company’s new financing also came from the Omidyar Network, the impact investing firm established by Ebay Inc. founder Pierre Omidyar, and Santa Monica-based Clocktower Technology Ventures. In addition to the startup’s funding, Steady also snagged a celebrity backer—former NBA star Shaquille O’Neal. Earlier this year, Steady joined ATDC’s Accelerate program and was a finalist for the 2018 Atlanta Startup Awards.
Lifestyle
Kevin Patrick, Exomotive – Kevin Patrick launched Exomotive in 2011 with only a $50,000 personal investment. He saw an opportunity to produce "kit cars" for Mazda Miata owners to take their old Miata and turn it into a street legal race car: The Exocet. Since then, he's scaled Exomotive to sell nearly 350 Exocets around the world, including Australia, Canada, Mexico and Namibia. Exomotive's headquarters are in the developing East Point neighborhood.
Lasso Gear – Lasso Gear designs compression socks that provide ankle support while reducing ankle and foot pain for athletes. The company closed a funding round, which included AJ Vaynerchuk, co-founder of VaynerMedia and VaynerSports, Kurt Thomas, an 18-year NBA veteran, and Arjun Chowdri, CIO at the PGA. The startup has grown revenue by 1,000 percent in the last six months and has signed endorsement deals with WNBA Star and two-time Olympic Gold Medalist, Angel McCoughtry, and basketball icon, Bone Collector. The company signed a distribution agreement to expand footprint into a new market through the back half of 2019.
Marshall Mosher, Vestigo – Vestigo designs physical team building experiences to meet the needs and core values of the companies they serve. Clients include other fellow startups such as Dagger and Greenlight Financial Technology, Inc. and major corporations like The Home Depot and Bennett Thrasher. Vestigo is a member of the ATDC Accelerate program and raised an initial seed round of $145,000. The company is interested in broadening its services to provide VR experiences to those with physical limitations. Co-founder Marshall Mosher leads his team and has grown to the business to help pioneer the first jet suit flights in Atlanta.
Nate Hybl – Nate Hybl, a former NFL football quarterback, opened gusto!, a healthy fast food restaurant, on Peachtree Road in South Buckhead in 2014. Hybl recently announced plans to open the fifth gusto! location in Chamblee with a drive-thru option as an added convenience for guests. The new location will represent Hybl’s same mission and serve the fresh bowls and wraps with bold, global flavors that it's known for, and will be the first gusto! to have a drive-thru, making the healthy meal more accessible.
Marketing, Advertising & Design
Springbot – Springbot provides marketing automation tools accessible to smaller ecommerce merchants. In 2018, Springbot launched the first data co-op for SMB retailers, was ranked 83rd on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 list and landed at No. 301 in the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing U.S. companies, ranking 13th in Atlanta and 35th nationally in the software category. It also won the MarTech Breakthrough Award for Best SMB Marketing Platform, was recognized as a best place to work by the Atlanta Business Chronicle for the fourth year in a row and is a member of the Metro Atlanta Chamber Backed by ATL program. In October of 2018, Springbot closed $15 million in funding.
Eletype – Eletype is an AI assistant for marketing teams. The startup was also a finalist at TechSquare Labs’ Atlanta Startup Battle and received funding from the seed stage venture fund. The company was founded by the former CTO-in-Residence at ATDC and appeared at TechCrunch’s Disrupt event in September.
Christine Courtney, C3 Agency – C3 Agency, an experimental marketing, consulting and event planning firm, had 1,106 percent revenue growth from 2017 to 2018. While the C3 team continued to pursue collaborative opportunities with agencies, CEO Christine Courtney prioritized nurturing her relationships with marketers of brands that offer well-made products, useful services and hold values that align with her company’s culture. Working directly with brands like Virgin Voyages, Gillette and Moet Chandon fueled C3's growth in 2018, in addition to the increased value brands are placing on experiential marketing and its effectiveness to generate brand loyalty and increase market share.
Client Command – Client Command uses martech in the automotive industry to engage online shoppers. In the past two years, Client Command launched the Active Shopper Network -- the data engine powering its marketing automation platform -- and was awarded a patent for the tech's ability to leverage data and messaging for prospects outside a dealer's database. The company says its customers experience an average ROI of 12:1 for its campaigns, 16:1 for retained campaigns and an industry-disrupting 10:1 for conquest campaigns. Client Command’s innovations on behalf of its customers have driven rapid growth for the company, which has been recognized on both the Inc. 5000 fastest growing companies list and the Atlanta Pacesetter list for two consecutive years.
Media Frenzy Global – Media Frenzy Global, a tech-focused marketing agency, kicked off 2019 with a new rebrand, including a new website and logo. Since 2016, the company has seen a 50 percent increase in growth.
Nonprofit
Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs, Inc. – ACE is a nonprofit that provides credit and essential business development sources to women, people of color and people with low incomes who do not have access to loans from traditional sources. Since 2000, ACE has helped over 900 business owners obtain $60 million in capital and create or retain 7,700-plus jobs while providing business advisory services to both those borrowers and thousands more entrepreneurs. ACE provides various types of funding, from small-business loans of less than $50,000 to commercial loans up to $1,000,000. ACE completed a strategic planning process in early 2018 that prioritized the importance of the core lending operations becoming more financially sustainable over five years (2018-2022). During the first year of implementation (2018), ACE’s portfolio grew 32.4 percent.
ArtsBridge Foundation – ArtsBridge provides arts education opportunities to students in grades K-12 through programs at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre including field trips, master classes, family programs and the annual Georgia High School Musical Theatre Awards celebrated as The Shuler Hensley Awards. Since inception in 2007, ArtsBridge served more than 350,000 students and educators from 58 Georgia counties, plus students from Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina.
Brawl for a Cause, Inc. – Brawl for a Cause, a nonprofit that allows entrepreneurs to box to raise money for a cause of their choice, became the first combat sports event on the field of Mercedes-Benz Stadium in 2018, hosting 1,600 guests and raising over $200,000 for causes worth fighting for. The nonprofit's mission is to donate $1 billion through Brawl for a Cause events and content to train, equip and inspire everyday people to fight for what they believe in most.
Focused Community Strategies – FCS partners with under-served neighborhoods in Atlanta to provide innovative and holistic development that produces a flourishing community. For over forty years, Focused Community Strategies has pioneered an innovative community development model that integrates mixed-income housing, local entrepreneurship, and supportive family services. Their approach has radically transformed the economic landscape in South Atlanta. When FCS created a grocery store, Carver Neighborhood Market, the store eliminated a food desert in South Atlanta. A coffee shop, Community Grounds, gave neighbors a new place to gather and hold events. Together, the two businesses saw 68,842 transactions, served 200 customers daily and employed 12 South Atlanta residents last year. In addition to this economic stimulation, FCS launched 16 local entrepreneurs by partnering with Emory’s Start:ME business accelerator to provide in-depth business training and mentorship, and grants. To date, FCS and its partners have created over 168 units of affordable housing to South Atlanta residents, and they will renovate a dozen more this year.
Playworks Georgia – Playworks is a nonprofit that leverages play to improve the health and well-being of children. Founded in two schools in California in 1996, Playworks launched in Georgia in 2014 with support from the Arthur Blank Family Foundation. Locally, the program will reach 13,679 children daily. The program has increased from three schools to 24 low-income elementary schools in five school districts. In 2017, the program received a 2017 Blue Ribbon Partnership Away from Fulton County School District.
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