Yesterday Micheal Tavani started a conversation on Twitter about this list of 20 most interesting Atlanta startups. The list is over three years old. I thought it would be interesting to go in and provide an update. Here it is.
BLiNQ Media
Sold to Gannett. Depending on your source it was either $40 million or $92 million. I know the number. Take the average and you are close enough.
BrightWhistle
Raised a total of $3.2 million, graduated from ATDC, and moving into their own digs off Piedmont Park.
Clearleap
Most recently raised a $20 million Series C and seem to have found traction delivering their TV everywhere platform.
ClipZone
Out of business (OOB).
Cloud Sherpas
Continues to grow revenues like Kudzu. Added Salesforce and ServiceNow capabilities. Spun off technology into BetterCloud. This is going to be a big winner.
CRESecure
Have not heard much from this hosted PCI solution since their $3 million raise in 2010. Appears to be dead.
Endgame Systems
Endgame raised a $29 million Series A and $27 million Series B from folks like Bessemer and Kleiner Perkins. The company is now headquartered in DC and the founders have all moved on. I am fairly confident they consider the venture to be successful and are on to bigger and better things.
MailChimp
According to their ads on NPR they have more than 5 million customers. Moving to fancy new digs in Ponce City Market. A privately held tech anchor.
RentWiki
Another company that has been pretty quiet since raising $2.4 million in 2010. Seems to have changed name to RentAdvisor which was acquired by Apartment List.
PlacePunch
Acquired by Silverpop.
PlayOn
Raised a $7.2 million Series C in 2011 and a $26 million Series D in 2013. PlayOn has teamed up with the National Federation of State High School Associations to launch the NFSH Network. It literally is the high school sports network. Their tagline says it all. High school lives here.
Preparis
The company has been a little quiet since graduating from ATDC in 2012.
Regator
The site remains active. It seems the team has moved on to new ventures.
ScoutMob
While everyone loves the app and the brand ScoutMob is successfully managing a pivot to a curated ecommerce experience.
Solidfire
Dave Wright has raised $68 million for his solid state storage system. He also moved it to Boulder to gain access to more domain knowledge. Win for Dave. Loss for Atlanta.
SoloHealth
SoloHealth has raised $24 million. While they seem to have a solid retail presence a recent boardroom shake up and change of strategy to focus on wellness plans for major employers raises some questions.
Twitpay
From all appearances the company is OOB.
Vertical Acuity
Raised $5 million than sold to Outbrain.
Vitrue
Acquired by Oracle for a sum north of $300 million.
Wavee
OOB.
The way I see it that adds up to five companies with successful founder exits, three that had "meh" exits, seven that are too soon to tell, and five that went out of business. I am pretty sure that four of the too soon to tells are going to be winners. That would put my successful startup identification rate in the 45% range.
Maybe I should be a VC.
Before I do that I am going to make a new top 20 Atlanta startup list.
Who should be on it?