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Last week one company won an industry award, another gained a new client and two introduced features to help brands target their audiences in a more efficient manner. 

Vitrue kicks off our roundup this week. This 2008 presenting company recently announced major analytics enhancements to its social relationship management platform. These enhancements are expected to provide brands with more real-time and comprehensive engagement metrics. Vitrue now boasts 120 different metric types including a way to track insights on negative feedback and even a global dashboard to gather distribution data as it happens. This will definitely be valuable to brands that pay attention to their online presence and care about creating content that is relevant to their target audiences.

Proximus Mobility‘s announcement also centered around effectively targeting a brand’s audience. The location based proximity marketing software company is creating entertaining content to help restaurant customers pass their ‘dwell time’ waiting for food to arrive. The solution is cost effective and customers have commented that it adds a cool factor to their restaurant experience. Many of us have seen the daily menus, promotional flyers and billboards that restaurants pay good money for in an effort to increase business. But how many can actually say those forms of advertisement were effective in generating new customers? Proximity provides multimedia menus with photos, how it’s made videos, contests, recipes, and questionnaires to engage potential customers on behalf of the restaurant. The company just concluded a 3 month campaign at a Florida restaurant with impressive results.

Interactive Advisory Software added Miller/Russell & Associates to its customer base. The company chose IAS as its new wealth management platform over previous provider Advent Software and Schwab.  Up against heavy competition, IAS was selected for its favorable pricing and ease of integration. By using IAS, Miller/Russell & Associates can now easily merge its portfolio management, financial planning, customer relationship management and rebalancing modules into one database; saving time and reducing errors from manual data entry. Instead Miller/Russell & Associates employees can now spend this time with current customers and securing new ones.

The Compass Intelligence and NE2NE.com’s “2012 A-List in M2M Award” was recently presented to Omnilink Systems in the people tracking technology category. Evaluation criteria included product launches, R&D spending, operational and financial metrics, etc. The company’s products include a child tracking AmberWatchGPS and a senior citizen tracking Comfort Zone Check-In. Omnilink was in good company as AT&T, IBM, GE, Coinstar/Redbox and Ford were also named as recipients of the award.

Remember to bookmark this page or follow us on Twitter for even more news about our area start-ups.

Have a news tip or story about a local start-up? Send them to editor@ventureatlanta.org.

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Here at Cache, we love to share stories of Georgia start-ups gaining market traction and exceeding milestones. So we’re posting a weekly compilation we’re calling “Georgia Start-up Notables” right here. Be sure to bookmark this page or follow us on Twitter for the latest.

This week, we begin with JouleX. The sustainable energy management systems provider recently attended Cisco Live in London to showcase their signature JouleX Energy Manager solution. Instead of just doing a presentation and telling attendees how their energy management products work, JouleX actually showed the products working in real time by monitoring the actual energy consumption of the Cisco Live “World of Solutions” connected components and devices.

Start-ups could borrow a page out of this playbook for their next industry event. Showing is more compelling than telling.

Since 2008, our next company has migrated more than one million customers to the Google platform and claims impressive revenue growth of over 300% for its third consecutive year! With statistics like these, it is not a surprise that 2009 presenting company Cloud Sherpas was recently named a Google Enterprise 2011 Partner of the Year. This honor should help further accelerate customer acquisition.

WellCentive recently became an Executive Corporate Partner of the American Medical Group Association (AMGA) which represents some of the nation’s most prestigious integrated healthcare delivery systems, an important prospect base for the healthcare intelligence solutions provider. The AMGA membership gives WellCentive access to more than 125,000 physicians in 49 states!

Our next two companies made key additions to their executive teams.

2010 presenting company Kabbage recently appointed Sam Wheeler to lead its business development efforts. Wheeler previously held executive positions in sales and customer experience at Optify and in small business services at Amazon.com. He will lead Kabbage’s partnership and data acquisition efforts.

After a reported exhaustive search, VoIP service provider Vocalocity announced Patrick Clark as its new Chief Financial Officer. Clark is no stranger to the duties of this position. He previously held the same title at The Weather Channel. In his new role, he will be responsible for Vocalocity’s financial, administrative, and business planning functions which also include finance, accounting, human resources and legal.

Photo by countrygirlatheart on Flickr

Believe it or not, we are on to the second month of 2012. January ushered in the fruitful Lunar New Year of the Water Dragon and a bumper crop of funding events for numerous Atlanta area companies. With amounts ranging from hundreds of thousands of dollars to upwards of $14 million, investors were busy in January!

2008 Venture Atlanta presenting company MFG.com kicks off our funding round up with a bang! The Atlanta-based online marketplace for manufacturers raised $5.3 million, according to a recent Securities & Exchange Commission filing. The company has reported that the funds raised will be used for product development and to launch their cloud-based software, LiveSource.com, which will help mid-to-large sized companies manage and source parts used to manufacture their products.

A number of Atlanta angels recently had their eye on the gaming sector as they invested $550,000 into Mowgli LLC,  a social gaming company. Their first game, Songster, allows Facebook users to live out their rock star fantasies by creating bands and songs with their friends. The company was founded by Marshall Seese, Adam Kunz, and Mike VanBeneden in 2010.

Chain Reaction Ecommerce, the parent company of 2009 Venture Atlanta presenting company CRE Secure also secured funding. They closed nearly $1 million from several investors including members of the executive team, software industry veteran Robert Bearden and Gardiner Garrard III and Sean Banks of TTV Capital. The company, which helps keep e-commerce companies attain PCI compliance, has raised $6.2 million since its 2002 debut.

In the mix last month was newcomer Clearside Biomedical.  A coming together of researchers at Georgia Tech and Emory University, the company’s technology delivers drugs and other therapeutics to specific locations in the eye. The company raised $4 million from Hatteras Venture Partners. Headquartered here in Atlanta, with a strong presence in the Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina, the company is led by veteran ophthalmic entrepreneurs Daniel White and Ben Yerxa, Ph.D. Clearside Biomedical will use the $4 million Series A venture financing to fund the initial development of their ocular microinjection platform and the clinical testing of their lead product.

Staying with healthcare theme, Sharecare, an interactive health and wellness social Q&A platform announced it had secured $14 million in growth equity financing. Led by Galen Partners and TomorrowVentures, LLC, the recent financing will be used to accelerate the company’s efforts to develop innovative programs, services and tools that promote healthy living as well as unity within the healthcare-focused community.  To further enrich Sharecare’s Q&A platform, the company also acquired The Little Blue Book (TLBB) and its extensive database of 400,000 physicians and 180,000 physician practices from Galen Partners and other investors, in exchange for common stock.

Sharecare’s chairman & chief architect, Jeff Arnold, will take on the CEO role at the company and David Jahns, managing partner at Galen Partners, will join the Board of Directors.

Wahoo Fitness, one of Venture Atlanta’s “companies to watch in 2012″ secured almost $1 million in funding in January and with that, the company is off to a great 2012. 

Last but not least, this round-up would not be complete if we didn’t include Pindrop Security’s high profile raise as listed in our recent Atlanta Start-ups in the News post.

Congratulations to all of the companies! The year is still young and we’re looking forward to seeing who we may get to mention in our next funding round-up!

Have a news tip? Send them to editor@ventureatlanta.org.

CodeGuard, which specializes in website backup and file integrity monitoring, was recently mentioned in a Business Insider article entitled “Backing up the Cloud to Your Computer- Saving Vital Social Media and Website Data.” CodeGuard’s simple setup and and user friendly features were highlighted. The company was also singled out along with four others in Mashable’s coverage of the Demo Day by Flashpoint companies at Andreessen Horowitz.

2011 Venture Spotlight company Racemi provides server imaging and cloud migration technology for companies. It was recently featured in a  ZDNet article and was specifically recognized for its workload migration capabilities.

Pindrop Security was a 2011 Showcase company. The company, which provides technology that detects, reports, and mitigates phone fraud, was recently profiled by the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Marquee Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz’s investment in the company earned it a story in the city’s premier business weekly.

Another Venture Atlanta 2011 Showcase company TripLingo  was mentioned on Examiner.com. Featured was the app’s “Slang Slider” which helps change a foreign phrase to something more formal, casual, slang or crazy, depending on the area.

Twitpay, the leading provider of payment systems solutions for social media networks, received a mention in online banking and technology magazine BankTech. The article, “Gartner Predicts Rise of External Social and Cloud-Based Banking Services” highlights the research firm’s annual report on trends in the financial services industry.

Recently featured in our January newsletter as a “company to watch” this year, Wahoo Fitness proved to be just as compelling to media covering CES. The company was included in Tech Digest’s  post, “CES 2012- Health and Wellness Gadgets Abound”.  The smartphone fitness technology company’s Blue HR heart rate strap was detailed on Europe’s longest running gadget site for its ease of use with numerous mobile devices, specifically including the iPhone 4S.

Congratulations to all companies. And as always, please send news tips to editor@ventureatlanta.org.

StartupChicks Pitch Competion at Hodges Room, ATDC

Twelve companies, six minutes and four slides. Those were the digits that mattered last Wednesday as more than 70 women gathered at the Hodges Room in ATDC for the third annual StartupChicks Pitch Competition.

The annual competition is open to female entrepreneurs only and twelve companies were selected from an application pool of more than 20. Each of the 12 companies had six minutes to pitch their company concept to a panel of all-star female serial entrepreneurs, executives and investors that included Joan Lyman, Karen Cope, Kelly Gay and Judi Vitale.

Jennifer Bonnett, founder of StartupChicks

Having been present all three years, in this editor’s opinion, the companies participating were the most diverse yet. Concepts ranged from a women’s sports community to a marketplace for interior designers to a software suite that helps businesses go global. In the end, the judges picked the following six companies:

1. Team Fenom: Women’s sports community
2. Synkup: Tungle for personal events
3. Intellitaste: Mobile app to record retail preferences.
4. Do Good Get Rewards: Reward marketplace for non-profits and retailers
5. Home Anatomy: Marketplace for interior designers and consumers
6. Raise Global Services: Match.com for corporations and non-profits

As the winner of this year’s competition, Team Fenom earned a slot to pitch at Startup Riot 2012. All six companies will undergo StartupChicks’ four-month Accelerator program. Previous participants Jackie Hutter (Class of 2010) and Caroline Van Sickle (Class of 2011) have since received funding from Atlanta Technology Angels for their respective companies.

Stay tuned as Venture Atlanta will be checking in on the class of 2012 right before their graduation in June.

Since both The Atlanta Business Chronicle and Cumming’s post provided comprehensive summaries of the companies and the Flashpoint program, this editor will share her impressions of the presentations as well as the reactions to the pitches by some of the attendees.

With information security being a core competency in Atlanta, it was no surprise that information security start-ups Social Fortress and Pindrop Security were the “belles of the ball.”

Here’s what Glenn McGonnigle of TechOperators had to say about Adam Ghetti and Social Fortress, “trusting data in a public cloud is a problem. This is the closest thing to a perfect solution that I’ve seen.” But in true “show me, don’t tell me” fashion, McGonnigle cracked a smile and added, “if it works.”

Adam Ghetti of Social Fortress

Ghetti impressed Kirkland with his “infectious enthusiasm and passion” for the business and won over Danny Davis, partner at 151 Locust Fund and CEO of Proving Ground. Davis saw Ghetti present at the CapVenture graduation event and thought Ghetti’s Flashpoint presentation offered a “better value proposition and story.”

The other two companies that stood out were David Moeller of CodeGuard and Tim Dorr of Billfold.

Moeller is the king of pitch competitions having taken home the top prize at CapVenture and the popular vote at Venture Atlanta. In a move that Linnea Geiss of Arcapita called “ballsy,” Moeller went with a live demonstration of his company’s product.The gamble won him admirers among the live tweeting audience:

And perhaps even a customer.

Billfold’s Tim Dorr took the direct approach. The ATDC entrepreneur in residence took his own advice to heart about ending with the ask. Not only did he deliver a succinct but engaging presentation, he did it with tongue firmly in cheek.

Billfold Presentation

Dorr’s inclusion of his company’s supposed bank routing number and account information in the last slide of his presentation gave the crowd quite a chuckle and lit up the tweet stream. We wonder if it’ll result in the requisite dollars. Stay tuned.

Becoming pitch perfect is certainly one of the goals of the Flashpoint accelerator program but ultimately, it’s about enabling more fundable local companies. And by that measure, the program is definitely experiencing early success. This is good for the start-up community and great for Atlanta.

We wish all the companies the very best as they travel to Union Square Ventures in New York City next week and Andreessen Horowitz in Menlo Park the week after for demo days at each of these firms.

Kudos to Merrick Furst who originally conceived of the program, the Flashpoint staff, mentors and other volunteers who made it happen.

CRE Secure Payments is the first cloud-based Internet payment security company with end-to-end PCI compliance for card-not-present merchants. CRE Secure enables leading ecommerce software solutions and payment software systems distributed worldwide with secure PCI-compliant hosted, payment processing solutions using patent-pending technology and through its partnerships with top global payment gateways. CRE Secure is a level one PCI DSS-certified service provider and a contributing member of the PCI Security Standards Council.

Team

Kevin Lee, President and CEO
Salvatore Iozzia, Founder and Chief Visionary Officer
Ian Juliano, CFO
Chuck Wright, Chief Information and Compliance Officer
Scott Logsdon, SVP of Technology
Katherine Hudson, SVP of Global Sales
Christopher Reilly, CPA, VP of Finance

Category: eCommerce
Investors: Miller Capital, TTV Capital

www.cresecure.com

January 2012 Newsletter

• FEATURE: Where Will Technology Investors Put Their Money in 2012
• NOTEWORTHY: Five Companies to Watch in 2012
• SPARKS: 2012 Spotlight Companies

WellCentive delivers a new generation of healthcare intelligence solutions that enable collaborative communities to transform the practice of medicine.  WellCentive’s Web-based solutions support a variety of initiatives, including Meaningful Use, Pay for Performance, Patient Centered Medical Home, Clinical Integration, Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS), HIE, and employer-sponsored programs. With intuitive online clinical decision-support tools and automated patient outreach, WellCentive delivers critical efficiencies and improves the quality of patient care while providing powerful return on investment.

Team

Frank Murphy, President, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors
Paul D. Taylor, M.D., Chief Medical Information Officer
Kirk Elder, CTO
Mason Beard, VP of Product Development
Leo Cooper, VP of Sales and Marketing
Cindy Kellogg, Controller

Category: Health IT
Investors: N/A

www.wellcentive.com

January 2012 Newsletter

• FEATURE: Where Will Technology Investors Put Their Money in 2012
• NOTEWORTHY: Five Companies to Watch in 2012
• SPARKS: 2012 Spotlight Companies

SoloHealth is a leader in self-service consumer healthcare, utilizing technology to develop and deploy interactive healthcare platforms and kiosks to empower consumers to take charge of their health through awareness, education and action. The award-winning company’s first offering was the EyeSite® vision kiosk, currently located in numerous retail outlets across America. In summer 2010, the company received a $1.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, to help enable innovation for the next-generation health and wellness platforms for healthcare and prevention. The company’s bilingual kiosks provide free health screenings and recommendations for follow-up care, as well as health and wellness information, which leads to prevention and lower healthcare costs.

Team

Bart Foster, CEO and Founder
Stephen Kendig, COO
Rebecca Barnett-Miesch, VP of Advertising Sales
Eric Hoell, VP of Product Development
Kevin Lavery, M.D., Chief Medical Officer

Category: Health IT
Investors: Atlanta Technology Angels, National Institutes of Health

www.solohealth.com

January 2012 Newsletter

• FEATURE: Where Will Technology Investors Put Their Money in 2012
• NOTEWORTHY: Five Companies to Watch in 2012
• SPARKS: 2012 Spotlight Companies

ControlScan is a provider of PCI compliance and security solutions focused on small to medium-sized merchants. The company also offers solutions in SSL Certificates, a livechat service, web application scanning, and application penetrating testing.

Team

Joan E. Herbig, CEO
John Fasano, CFO
Jethro J. Felton III, Executive VP of Sales and Business Development
Heather Varian Foster, VP of Marketing
Steve Robb, VP of Products and Services

Category: Internet Security
Investors: Total Technology Ventures

www.controlscan.com

January 2012 Newsletter

• FEATURE: Where Will Technology Investors Put Their Money in 2012
• NOTEWORTHY: Five Companies to Watch in 2012
• SPARKS: 2012 Spotlight Companies