From Israel to Tech Square | Flashpoint Attracts Talent to ATL

Georgia Tech’s Flashpoint works closely with founders to enable them to think clearly about their businesses. It is unique in implementing startup engineering, a business creation and innovation process developed by its Director, Dr. Merrick Furst. The Flashpoint team is led by Dr. Furst and is supported by James Coleman and rock star intern Amreeta Duttchoudhury (check out our scoop on her here). Over the past 6 months, a solid group of teams have been working their way through the customer discovery process and on March 31st, they’ll be presenting at Flashpoint Demo Day. Check out these two startups that’ll be on stage at Demo Day.

DecisionIQ

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Please tell us a little about the company and its founders:
DecisionIQ’s founders, Nagi Gebraeel, PhD and Andrew Lewis, bring a unique blend of engineering horsepower and business savvy that enables them to transform the world of maintenance for high value assets.

Nagi is a world leader in prognostics research and Director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Predictive Analytics and Real Time Optimization at the Industrial and Systems Engineering department (ISyE). He is also the Associate Director of Georgia Tech’s Strategic Energy Institute (SEI). His research spans over 15 years with over 25 man-years of development with his team. He has over 1,000 peer citations to his research, developed in conjunction with major industry partners and the National Science Foundation. He led the development over 12 families of validated algorithms and has three patents pending in big data prognostics Nagi holds a Doctorate in Industrial & Systems Engineering from Purdue University.

Andrew is a visionary and serial entrepreneur with over 25 years startup experience. He has developed breakthrough products and led companies in high performance computer systems, software and cloud platforms. A former fighter aircraft designer, Andrew builds through strategic relationships as he did in securing a clone license from Apple Computer (one of four in the world), and co-developed a breakthrough multiprocessor system with IBM Microelectronics. He holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and a Bachelor degree in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Tech.

Follow Andrew on Twitter: @LewisAndrewF

What problem are you addressing?:
Today, maintenance for industrial equipment is based on condition monitoring and on fixed schedules dictated by manufacturers. Enterprises are highly vulnerable to unexpected failures and loss of revenue from down time. They also waste money through underutilization and unnecessary replacement.

Through scores of industry interviews, we’ve seen operations managers and C-Suite executives working to recover lost capacity, reduce spare parts inventories and systematically extend asset life beyond manufacturers service contracts.

DecisionIQ is enabling a maintenance revolution by providing a new breed of analytics solutions that allow customers to proactively and holistically maintain the health of all critical assets and optimize fleets operations. DecisionIQ’s solutions are built by engineers who understand the mechanics and operations of customer’s equipment systems and can leverage our proprietary algorithms and big data platform.

For whom?:
We seek to partner with companies looking to optimize the performance and health of high value, mission critical assets. Initially, we are working with those in the power generation, transportation and OEM sectors. For power generation we are helping with turbines, nuclear reactors, generators, compressors and valves. For railroads and airlines, we are helping with gas turbines, generators, APUs, and maintenance of way for railroad infrastructure. For OEMs, this includes minimizing failures of field based equipment.

How does Atlanta weave into your story?:
Atlanta is a natural fit for our venture, as both of the co-founders have ties to Georgia Tech. Nagi is a professor and has on-going research on campus. Andrew is an alumnus, a Distinguished Engineer, and active mentor at Georgia Tech’s Flashpoint startup machine.

Follow DecisionIQ on:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/decisioniq
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/3877162

GetLawyer

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Please tell us a little about the company and its founders:
Edo Ohayon is an experienced entrepreneur. He has been an attorney for 15 years , and has served as a CEO of a large NGO providing social and economic researches in Israel.

Max Kholmyansky is a talented computer scientist who holds a Masters in mathematics from the Hebrew university in Jerusalem. He has developed software for the Israeli air force and has served as a VP, R&D of a startup that was sold for $22M.

Olivia Clark is a second-year law student at Georgia State University. She has two bachelor’s degrees in English and Italian from the University of Georgia.

What problem are you addressing?:
Many people need legal services but don’t have the knowledge, access, or money to get them. Also, many sole practitioners and small law firms have excess capacity but can’t efficiently find clients, provide services at a cost the low end of the market can bear, or easily acquire the expertise for certain types of common cases.

For whom?:
Legal services consumers and sole practitioner lawyers

How does Atlanta weave into your story?:
We came from Israel to take advantage of flashpoint and the opportunities to develop our business in Atlanta. It has been a great chance to experience southern hospitality of Atlantans who have opened their hearts and helped us achieve our goals.

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