On Thursday night, serial entrepreneurs, Paul Judge and Allen Nance welcomed the Atlanta entrepreneurial community to TechSquare Labs and the Atlanta Startup Battle, a quarterly event series providing local startups the unique opportunity to pitch to local and outside early-stage investors for $100K.
“We are creating a bigger ecosystem,” says Judge. “There are so many smart, talented people here in town and by helping them bring their ideas to life — it creates more opportunities, more jobs, and a better city.”
The Atlanta Startup Battle is yet another benchmark in TechSquare Labs’ short but robust history of fostering and celebrating entrepreneurial talent in Atlanta. From the recruitment process to the winner’s announcement, the event helped the five selected startups through thoughtful feedback, a day-long workshop, coaching, and exposure to investors and the press.
The pitch battle’s knockout came from FraudScope, a startup that targets healthcare-related fraud claims. CEO Musheer Ahmed, PhD took the stage for a five-minute pitch on how they want to shut down the current $290 billion in U.S. healthcare fraud. He and his team use automated intelligence to detect patient billing fraud, waste, and abuse.
“We’re very excited,” said Ahmed after winning. “We want to move forward with this momentum, pick up the pace for the commercialization of this technology, and continue building the company.”
FraudScope was selected by a panel of investors, including Mark Buffington, BIP Capital; Kirby Harris, Base Ventures; Michelle Jarrard, GRA Venture Fund; Sig Mosely, Mosley Ventures; and Michael Neril, Spider Capital.
“As a startup, we’re always preparing, we’re always ready to show our idea to make sure we can make investors understand and get it on the market,” said Ahmed on winning the judges over.
The other four startups, selected from numerous applicants, include:
- uPet, a rent-a-pet solution for prospective owners
- DiaScan, a new machine learning technology used to diagnose lung cancer found in CT scans
- Patientory, a healthcare-focused startup wanting to make patient record storage more personal
- Kyasis, a startup that uses AI to optimize your social media content
“We wanted to find a great company and I think that we did that,” says Nance.
“Goal two was to showcase what Atlanta is capable of doing — from an event perspective and from a product perspective. I think we showed the type of Atlanta startup event we could do. We’re going to do this four times a year. Beyond that, the energy was great and it was a delight to see everyone in the community.”
The next iteration of Atlanta Startup Battle will happen in the spring. Stay tuned and see more news from TechSquare Labs here.
Photos by Diane Lin/Courtesy of TechSquare Labs.
