Engage’s Post

Hey everyone! I'm Apoorv Kumar, a Summer Intern with Engage and an MBA student from Emory, taking over Engage's LinkedIn for the day. Two days ago, we kicked off a new era for CleanTech in Georgia at the Engage offices in Tech Square. Engage leader, Bill Nussey started us off, and our host, Cynthia Curry from the Metro Atlanta Chamber, led some of the top leaders across the Georgia Cleantech community in a discussion about unifying efforts, leveraging resources, and collectively curating a CleanTech visionboard for the future of Cleantech in our city and in our state. A big thank you to everyone who attended and took the first big step towards making Georgia the newest CleanTech hub of the US! Amy Jaick of FREYR Battery, Andy Marshall of Georgia Cleantech Innovation Hub, Anthony Oni of Energy Impact Partners, Brooke Perez of Georgia Power Company, Cory Hewett, David Stone Eady of Drawdown Georgia Business Compact, Eric Hartz of Nexus Circular, Jennifer Singh of ATDC, James Marlow of the Southface Institute, Matthew Britt of Honeywell, Miguel Granier, Michael Chanin of Cherry Street Energy, Michael P Oxman of Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business Ray C Anderson school, Morgan (Walsh) Phillips of Cox Enterprises, Alex Nussey of Wattch, Richard Gruber of the Georgia Tech Strategic Energy Institute, Shamus Kahl, and many others that LinkedIn won't let us fit! #CleanTech #ClimateResilience #Decarbonization #Innovation #GreenEnergy #Sustainability #RenewableEnergy #EnergyTransition #CleanEnergy #GreenTech 

🎉 Introducing the Summer 2024 class of interns! 🎉 Engage and Tech Square Ventures are honored to be working with this exceptional set of students from the Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology & Stanford University. Our mission with our internship program is to bring educational opportunities in the startup and corporate innovation ecosystem to students in Atlanta. Over the summer, these interns will work in our design, insights, investments, and operations tracks across our team and have the opportunity to learn from top entrepreneurs and corporate executives in the Engage community. Join us in welcoming these interns, new and returning, into the Engage family! Anand Krishnan, Apoorv Kumar, Zachary Thomas, Alex Swan, Vinay Govindaraju, Rachel W., Jonathan Dase, Alexis Frith & John Hill

We are still buzzing from the energy at our Executive Reception at Georgia Power Company headquarters last week. The convergence of Atlanta’s vibrant startup ecosystem with top-tier investors, visionary corporate executives, and leaders from Georgia Institute of Technology was an incredible reminder of what we are privileged to be a part of at Tech Square Ventures and Engage. A big thank you to everyone who joined us and contributed to making this event a massive success. We also want to send a special shoutout to our incredible startups that were part of Cohort 13 - Aetos Imaging, AdPipe, Blue Frontier, Inc., Coactive AI, Humantelligence Inc., Learn to Win, Onwards HR, and PlayerZero. Check out the recap below and relive the magic with us! #Startups #VentureCapital #Innovation #Atlanta #Networking #Entrepreneurship https://lnkd.in/emuv5vZ6

Kim Greene CEO of Georgia Power Company, is our featured Fireside Guest today. Kim’s extensive career in the energy industry and engineering background have fueled her passion for innovation. In her first year leading Georgia Power, she's described the experience as "unforgettable" and deeply impactful. Before taking the helm in March 2023, Kim spent years honing her expertise and getting excited about shaping the future of energy during events like Engineers Week. Her humility and enthusiasm for this role are truly inspiring. But Kim's influence goes beyond just leading a major utility company. As a trailblazer in the STEM field, she's a powerful role model for the next generation, especially young girls. Her unwavering determination and commitment to sustainable solutions make her the perfect speaker. Join us as we celebrate Kim's leadership and vision for driving positive change! #WomeninSTEM #EnergyInnovation #LeadershipInspiration

For our final Cohort 13 CEO Story, we are so excited to introduce Cody Coleman, the co-founder and CEO of Coactive AI! “Over the past decade, we've seen an unprecedented surge in content, leaving organizations inundated with vast amounts of visual content that acts more like a tax (or liability) than an asset," said Cody Coleman. "Our multimodal application platform empowers organizations to effortlessly search and analyze this immense volume of unstructured image and video data—no PhD or metadata required. We help deliver intelligent context to content at scale." Driven by their passion for technology and fascination with artificial intelligence, Coleman and his co-founder, William A. Gaviria Rojas, created Coactive AI in 2021. Having both studied at MIT, they shared an interest in the rapidly evolving field of AI. Recognizing the growing importance of data-driven decision-making in businesses, Coleman and Gaviria focused on enhancing machine learning capabilities to extract insights faster. They observed that visual data – like images and videos – posed unique challenges due to its unstructured nature and sheer volume. Simply put – organizing this data manually was so time-consuming and inefficient that most companies were not even trying. To tackle this problem, Coactive developed a breakthrough multimodal AI technology that enables users to search through visual content far more effectively. For example, users can ask questions like, "How many images like this have been uploaded?" or "Who is uploading images like these?" Coactive's innovation lies in optimizing the process of tagging, loading, and searching visual data for enterprises. Coactive automates the loading and indexing of raw images, making them easily searchable, and doing so in a fraction of time and resources traditionally required. The company was recognized in 2023 on Forbes list of the Top 50 AI startups in the world. In one powerful example, Coactive worked with a Fortune 500 retailer that needed to sift through a vast collection of product images and videos for marketing purposes. With Coactive's AI-powered solution, the retailer could quickly find the most suitable content in minutes rather than hours, or not at all. Coleman earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT and a Ph.D. from Stanford. He gained valuable industry experience through internships at tech giants like Google, Pinterest, Jump Trading LLC, and Facebook, before venturing into entrepreneurship and eventually founding Coactive. Cody was born in prison. His personal story and journey to Coactive is deeply inspiring. Coactive’s partner Amazon put together an amazing three-minute video story on Cody and Coactive that everyone should watch. https://shorturl.at/g59na

In the latest news of Cohort 13’s CEO’s, we are thrilled to announce Connor Offutt, CEO of Aetos Imaging! Aetos Imaging was co-founded by Connor Offutt, driven by his childhood fascination with technology and his knack for entrepreneurship. The company's goal is to enhance asset visibility, especially in operations and facility management. The vision for Aetos was born when he realized that technology similar to Google's street view could streamline the process of assessing facilities by providing quick visual data on their layout and equipment. They achieve this by employing 3D scanning technology to create precise digital replicas of facilities, referred to as "digital twins." These digital twins enable tailored training and operational processes specific to each site, reducing the need for physical site visits during inspections. “Aetos operates on the belief that reality is the best source of truth. We use drone 360 point cloud data to reconstruct entire facilities on the cloud. This empowers enterprises with operational tools to manage maintenance, asset information, access live IoT data, and train technicians and operators with site-specific information. This visual experience is accessible from any device connected to the cloud." Aetos’ vision is to complement the existing computerized maintenance management systems commonly used in facility management. Chick-fil-A is putting Aetos to work to help them streamline the restaurant’s already legendary operational effectiveness. Their collaboration optimizes facility audits by documenting various aspects of their spaces, from parking arrangements and lighting fixtures. Beyond food services, Aetos is working with companies in oil and gas, heavy manufacturing, and commercial real estate. Offutt, who grew up in Kyrgyzstan, was drawn to the entrepreneurial culture in the U.S. His expertise in green building consulting sparked the inception of Aetos. In 2015, he founded Titan Tennis Academy with the mission to impart discipline, character, and the rewards of hard work to young players. Presently, he leads a highly skilled team at Aetos Imaging, comprised of developers, technologists, and metaverse-enabling reality capture professionals. Away from the business, Connor is an avid tennis player, disc golf fanatic, local event specialist, and inspiration to his boys.

Next with Cohort 13’s CEO Stories, Engage would like to introduce Atlanta’s very own Animesh Koratana from PlayerZero! “As companies and products grow, there's usually a gap that widens between the people who create the software (engineers) and people who support it (support, QA, SREs). This gap makes it harder to innovate quickly, making it more challenging to understand and address user needs effectively.” Animesh grew up surrounded by startups –  inspired by his father's own successful career as an entrepreneur. After studying AI and computer science at Stanford, he founded PlayerZero – a tool to automate the process of detecting and finding the root cause of problems in complex software. He noticed that tech companies often struggled to translate customer reports or tickets from non-technical users or teams into actionable code changes. PlayerZero solves this problem by gathering all the necessary diagnostic information, like screenshots, steps, relevant tickets, and developer tools, and uses AI to tie this information to the underlying software code. It effectively bridges the gap between non-technical descriptions of issues and the technical solutions required to address them. This streamlined approach aids developers and support teams in addressing customer issues autonomously, without the need to switch between multiple platforms or seek assistance from others. The platform also spots the most critical areas by checking code changes and reviewing every line of code to avoid repeating mistakes. PlayerZero then sifts through the product to prioritize customer issues for the engineering team. To do this effectively, they leverage anomaly detection, health tracking, and alerts in workplace communication systems. Animesh Koratana, originally from metro Atlanta, left for the Bay Area to be a researcher at Stanford University. During his time at Stanford, he conducted research in the DAWN lab, focusing on building accessible and scalable data-intensive machine learning systems advised by Matei Zaharia (Founder & CTO @ Databricks) and Peter Bailis (VP, AI Google).

For our next Cohort 13 CEO Story, we are delighted to introduce you to Sasha Seymore from Learn to Win! Sasha Seymore, a Morehead-Cain Scholar, attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he also played basketball. Later, Seymore earned his MBA from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, alongside his roommate from UNC and co-founder, Andrew Powell. When Seymore joined UNC’s basketball team, he faced the challenge of learning numerous plays. To simplify the process, he and Powell, who was the student body president, experimented with ways to make learning more engaging for student athletes. While at Stanford’s business school together, they ended up creating a breakthrough in learning techniques and decided to create a startup around it. Sasha explains they noticed big improvements in student athletes' overall performance. Their initial success was even recognized in the New York Times. This accomplishment inspired Andrew and Sasha to expand their horizons: “Why not use these methods for military training, where the value of peak performance is even higher than athletics?” Sasha and the Learn to Win team have not only expanded to the Department of Defense, but into corporate training as well. Engage is proud to be partnering with the company as they continue to bring their amazing learning technology to the world of business. Their platform is used by NFL referees and college football teams, including the University of Michigan, who won the 2024 National Championship. Alongside various enterprise organizations, their most noteworthy partner is the U.S. military, including branches like the Air Force, Space Force, Navy, and Marine Corps. Sasha also serves as a reserve officer with the Defense Innovation Unit, helping the US military accelerate the adoption of advanced commercial technology. Before founding Learn to Win, Sasha worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Company in Atlanta, played professional basketball in Europe, and was recently named to Forbes' 30 Under 30 in Education.