Over 150 of Atlanta’s startup ecosystem members gathered last Friday night for the inaugural Atlanta Startup Awards to find out who would take home the trophy in each of five company and three individual categories. Organized by Startup Atlanta, the Awards aim to celebrate the city’s most successful startup companies, entrepreneurs, and the community leaders, including Lifetime Achievement winner Grace Fricks, President and CEO of Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs, who support them.
“The Atlanta Startup Awards were conceived as a way to get the entire community involved in recognizing some of our city’s most exciting and high-growth startups and founders. We also included individual awards to acknowledge the community leaders that help grow and support the ecosystem,” says Charlton Cunningham, Executive Director of Startup Atlanta. “It was gratifying to see how many members of the ecosystem volunteered their time and contributed to make sure the best companies were included and the Awards were a success.”
The winners of the Awards were:
Companies
- Best B2B Startup: Customer growth platform UserIQ
- Best B2C Startup: Neighbor-to-neighbor shipping platform Roadie
- Best Social Impact Startup: Emergency call routing platform LaaSer Critical Communications
- Scrappiest Startup: Coding bootcamp DigitalCrafts
- Art of the Pivot: Marketing intelligence provider Converge (formerly Badgy)
Individuals
- Top Impact Player: Scoutmob and Switchyards Downtown Club co-founder Dave Payne
- Top Community Builder: Payne and co-founder Michael Tavani
- Lifetime Achievement: Grace Fricks, founder and now CEO and President of ACE, who leads the 20-person nonprofit team to provide small business financial institution loans to underserved entrepreneurs.
Following the Awards ceremony, emcee Rickey Bevington of Georgia Public Broadcasting closed out the night by congratulating all the winners and the night continued at The Gathering Spot with an after party.
Hype sat down with Fricks after the Awards to learn more about her major contributions to the Georgia business economy (including the creation and retention of 6,200 jobs). Stay tuned for the interview later this week.
Photos via David Ahn.
