21 Startups to Watch in 2021

Startup founders must be flexible if they want their companies to succeed. In 2020, the pandemic made the path toward growth even more difficult as companies grappled with remote work and reduced industry activity.  

To survive the historic year, flexibility wasn’t an option. It was a necessity.  

Atlanta Inno and Atlanta Business Chronicle are celebrating the early-stage startups that made it through last year’s turmoil and are now set for continued growth.

The 21 Startups to Watch in 2021 are companies at their Series A investment round or earlier that have hit milestones foreshadowing expansion. These companies may have raised venture capital, completed well-known incubator and accelerator programs, invented new technology with a market fit or achieved high revenue growth.

From music and social impact to finances and marketing, these startups are disrupting their industries and innovating solutions that could change the way we live and do business. 

Carbice 

Carbice Corp., a startup spun out of Georgia Tech research on nanotechnology, raised a $15 million Series A round to scale the manufacturing of its product Carbice Carbon, high thermal conductivity nanomaterials that reduce the amount of heat generated by electronics. The product came out of Georgia Tech professor Baratunde Cola’s research as part of a program with the federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The startup plans to expand into consumer electronics to prevent them from overheating with the nanomaterials. 

Charityvest 

Charityvest Inc., a donation platform run by Atlanta financial technology startup Vennfi Inc., lets people create tax-deductible accounts to give to charities and keep track of the amount. The platform has no fees and includes donation options for more than 1.4 million U.S.-based nonprofits with cash, cryptocurrency or stock. Charityvest uses donor-advised funds and creates consolidated tax receipts for donors. The platform launched in December 2019, raised $3.7 million in 2020 and participated in Silicon Valley’s prestigious Y-Combinator accelerator. Georgia Tech graduates Stephen Kump, Jon Koon and Ashby Foltz founded the company. 

CharterUp 

CharterUp LLC, a digital marketplace for bus companies, claimed the No. 8 spot in Deloitte’s North America 2020 Technology Fast 500 list with a 24,737% three-year revenue growth. CharterUp provides the real-time data of Uber and the bus options of Expedia in its marketplace, CEO Armir Harris said. The company saw a demand shock at the onset of the pandemic, but business has since picked up with new Covid-safe features. CharterUp partners with more than 1,000 bus companies nationwide, working mostly in the government, education and blue-collar business industries. 

Civic Dinners

Founder Jenn Graham created Civic Dinners LLC as a technology-enabled platform to facilitate community conversations on social issues with the hope that these talks would turn into actionable change. The small-group, dinner conversations moved virtual during the pandemic and became especially helpful for leaders brainstorming equity and inclusion initiatives after last summer’s nationwide social justice protests. Civic Dinners closed a $1.1 million seed round led by Atlanta Seed Co., and Graham quadrupled her team to 28 people. The startup has about 40 clients, which include corporations and local governments mostly based around Atlanta. Graham wants to reach 1 million people through these dinners in 2021. 

EnrichHER 

EnrichHER Inc. connects companies led by women and founders of color to investments and advisory networks through partnering with corporate impact funds, foundations and individual investors. The company has provided $3.5 million in financing to 86 companies across the U.S. In 2020, EnrichHER launched an accelerator program with $375,000 in funding for seven companies. EnrichHER participated in the Techstars Anywhere Accelerator in 2019. Roshawnna Novellus, an Atlanta Business Chronicle Women Who Means Business honoree, founded the company in 2017. Its goal is to distribute $100 million in business loans over the next five years. 

Fixd 

Fixd Automotive Co-Founder and CEO John Gattuso went from selling his product to people in Piedmont Park to landing as the No. 11 spot in Deloitte’s North American 2020 Technology Fast 500 list, with a three-year revenue growth of 17,663%. Gattuso and his team of more than 20 employees manufacture the Fixd Sensor, which plugs into any 1996 or newer car and diagnoses electrical problems, similar to what car mechanics or dealerships do. After getting the manufacturing off the ground with a Kickstarter campaign, Gattuso has bootstrapped the startup since founding it in 2014. 

Gatherly 

Born out of the pandemic need for virtual conferencing, Gatherly came out of Georgia Tech’s CREATE-X program and has not stopped growing. CEO Chris Cherian said the platform hosts about 200 events per week. Its first large event was the CREATE-X Demo Day, and founding director Raghypathy Sivakumar said participants loved Gatherly's interactive platform, which feels like a virtual trade show. Gatherly has a testing period for hosts and attendees to minimize problems the day of the event. Cherian sees people continuing to use virtual events as a cheaper option to stay connected throughout the year, even when in-person events start again. 

Groundfloor 

Groundfloor is using its platform to disrupt real estate investing and residential displacement from gentrification. Founded in 2013, the platform provides short-term real estate loans for individuals looking to build or renovate their houses, with a goal to increase loan accessibility. The loans are financed through retail investors, who make their money through interest rates. The startup raised more than $3.6 million through crowdfunding on SeedInvest and has a total of $26 million in total capital. Groundfloor has about 50 employees, Dally said, and grants about 50 to 60 loans per month at an average of a 10.5% interest rate. 

Healthy Hip Hop 

Healthy Hip Hop Inc. helps educate children through kid-friendly hip-hop songs. The education technology startup uses music and videos so schools and parents can teach their children through dance and lyrics, promoting mental and physical wellness, academic success and social emotional learning. Founder, CEO and former street rap artist Roy Scott started the app in 2017 after realizing his 4-year-old son was picking up on inappropriate lyrics in his original songs. Scott participated in the Cox Enterprises Social Impact Accelerator, received an investment from Google for Startups Black Founders Fund and works with Atlanta’s Collab Capital as a growth partner. 

JTEC Energy 

Super Soaker inventor Lonnie Johnson’s next big project may be a new way to harness untapped, renewable energy. Johnson says he created a device that can convert any waste heat, such as from solar panels, factories or cars, into energy. JTEC Energy, Johnson’s startup led by President and CEO Michael McQuary, raised a $1.5 million seed round to bring the product out of the lab and start real-world testing. Executives from Southern Co. and General Electric invested in the startup, which shows how it could be a game-changer for clean energy and efficiency, McQuary said. 

MedTrans Go 

MedTrans Go Inc. aims to solve for cancellation of healthcare appointments, specifically because of transportation and interpretation problems, which CEO Dana Weeks said are the two biggest reasons for people to cancel. During the pandemic, the business-to-business startup also added prescription delivery options and video appointments. The startup has a digital network of drivers for patients and interpretations available for more than 100 languages. Founded by Dr. Obi Ugwonali in 2017, MedTrans Go presented at the 2020 Venture Atlanta investor conference. 

Presso 

Presso, a startup founded by Thibault Corens and Nishant Jain in 2018 under the company name LaundrySucks.io, produces a robotics machine that can clean and press clothes in under five minutes. The machine, born out of the founders’ hatred of doing laundry while attending Purdue University, is now used in the movie industry to keep costume-cleaning on premises. The founders raised $1.6 million from notable West Coast investors in 2020 and added a Covid-19 disinfecting feature to the machines. With offices in San Francisco and New York, they plan to ramp up production of the machines and expand into new markets this year. 

Queues 

Queues, an app that tells people how long lines are at restaurants or other venues, had to change its business model in 2020. Queues founder, CEO and Georgia Tech student Samuel Porta worked with the university to adjust his app so it showed students where the least-crowded study areas were on campus, allowing for better social distancing. Porta went through Georgia Tech’s CREATE-X incubator twice, before and after his pandemic pivot. Porta expects to continue with his original idea after the pandemic, which won first place in Georgia Tech’s InVenture Prize in March 2020. 

Relay Payments 

Financial technology startup Relay Payments quietly raised $43 million in 2020, putting it in the top 10 list for Atlanta funding deals. The startup provides an end-to-end instant electronic payment network for logistics companies and has operated mostly under the radar in the two years since its founding. It has investments from notable firms such as Addition, Ribbit Capital and Spark Capital. The company processes more than 150,000 transactions each month and aims to streamline payments so the supply chain is more efficient. Co-founders Ryan Droege and Spencer Barkoff previously founded Atlanta startup RoadSync, another digital payment platform for logistics companies. 

SmartPM Technologies 

SmartPM Technologies Inc. provides a software that analyzes construction project timelines and pinpoints areas of possible inefficiency. That capacity could help construction projects stay on track despite Covid-19-related disruptions. Despite little advertising, demand for SmartPM boomed in 2020. The startup tripled its sales revenue and raised a $500,000 seed round in early February, bringing its investments to about $3 million. In 2021, founder and Georgia Tech alumnus Michael Pink hopes to again triple its growth and expand its artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities. 

SnapNurse 

SnapNurse, a platform run by SnapMedTech Inc. that allows healthcare facilities access to on-demand nurses and other healthcare professionals, saw explosive growth in 2020. Before the pandemic, the platform would connect five to 10 nurses at a time to hospitals that needed extra help for elective surgeries. During the pandemic, SnapNurse deployed 500-1,000 nurses across 25 facilities for a rapid Covid-19 response. CEO Cherie Kloss said she crammed 10 years of business development into six months. Revenue grew 9,900%, and she added 100 more employees. About 50,000 nurses use the platform, which uses automated technology to keep up with demand. 

SweatPack 

Founder Umama Kibria knows exercising is always better with community, so she created fitness web app SweatPack that allows people to sign up for sports leagues or fitness classes with a group of friends or strangers, which usually lasts for six-week intervals. The pandemic delayed its official launch, so Kibria added virtual fitness activities to the app and plans to release the mobile app this year. Sweatpack participated in Atlanta Tech Village’s It Takes a Village, Georgia State University’s Main Street Entrepreneurs Seed Fund and Beyond the Game accelerators. Kibria is a Forbes under 30 honoree and pitched at Venture Atlanta.   

Upbeat Music App 

Video conferences may work for meetings, but it doesn’t work for musicians. Internet lag caused a class or ensemble to sound chaotic and jumbled, but virtual performances were the only option during the pandemic. Sudarshan Muralidhar and Seth Radman, both musicians and friends since high school, created UpBeat Music App as a solution to this problem. The Upbeat Music LLC co-founders developed the solution a few months into the pandemic, and metro Atlanta school districts jumped on the software when school started back in the fall. Radman also founded Crescendo, another music technology app that was acquired by Ultimate Guitar in 2019. 

Verady 

Verady Inc. is bringing accounting and audit technology to cryptocurrencies, a much-needed feature as those payments start to become more mainstream. Founded in 2016, the startup produces Legible Tax Pro so professionals, financial institutions, corporations and regulators can verify and report on digital assets. Backed by Atlanta’s TTV Capital, the startup also participated in the Engage tech accelerator, which is a partnership between Georgia Tech, Tech Square Ventures and local corporations. 

Viva Finance 

Founded by brothers Jack and Hodges Markwalter in 2019, Viva Finance Inc. provides loans to people based on employment history rather than just credit scores. That model became especially useful during the pandemic when people suddenly lost their jobs or faced hefty medical bills. The brothers said Viva Finance has given out about 1,000 loans, mostly to people working in the education and healthcare industries. The founders have raised $3.5 million, which includes investments from the Atlanta Technology Angels and New York’s Acumen Fund. They are expanding through the Southeast and expect to see a threefold growth in 2021. 

Voxie 

Text message marketing startup Voxie Inc. saw a 600% revenue growth in 2020 as companies looked to connect with their customers through more personalized techniques. Voxie uses behavioral data and artificial intelligence to send personal text conversations for company marketing. Founded by Bogdan Constantin in 2018, the startup raised $6.7 million from a team of well-known Atlanta investors at the beginning of the year and have new features and a hiring spree planned for 2021.