The next cohort of the Bronze Valley Accelerator program has been selected.
The five companies selected for the spring 2021 program were recruited from the Southeast and represent a wide variety of industries.
This is the third class for the Bronze Valley Accelerator program, which is a free, seven-week accelerator that work with five startups at a time for no fees and no equity. The program kicked off on May 6 and is being held virtually.
The five companies are:
Avenue (Birmingham)
Cofounder and CEO: Benjamin Vickers
A product that allows users to build relationships and create social communities in real-time and in physical spaces. Users can check in to any social space and can view profiles of other users to make informed and meaningful connections. Users then can send a message to start a new relationship and post in the app about what is happening in that location. Avenue piloted at the University of Alabama with over 800 beta users and will launch in June 2021 with a redesigned interface.
frakktal (Houston)
Founder and CEO: Jhana Porter
frakktal develops thermoplastic elastomers (TPE) from end-of-life tires, post-consumer/post-industrial plastics and local biomass grated toward manufacturing. The company aims to empower industry to reduce waste and procure TPE materials through its subscription program that promotes a closed-loop polymer supply chain.
MyTAASK (Daphne)
Founder and CEO: Thkisha Sanogo
MyTAASK connects users’ projects and to-do-lists to their community of support to automate repetitive tasks. MyTAASK experts curate plans, experiences and time-saving life hacks for users to download, or users can create and share a custom MyTAASK with people in their network. According to Bronze Valley, since launching the website in September 2020, MyTAASK has built a community of over 500 members and generated $56,000 in revenue from membership and planner sales.
PaperAI (Huntsville)
Founder and CEO: Georgiana Wright
The company generates customizable and affordable fan fiction for fan communities without an author or publisher, removing the costs of commissioning fan fiction. PaperAI uses natural language processing models to generate over 140,000 different story combinations to allow anyone to be represented in their favorite stories. Since launching its beta in February 2021, PaperAI has attracted 50 users and secured grants from the IGDA Diverse Game Developers Fund and 10KE.
Ziscuit (Atlanta)
Founder and CEO: Mark Anthony Peterson
The company aims to save shoppers time and money by having grocery stores bid to fulfill their shopping lists. Ziscuit’s two-sided reverse auction marketplace is supported by a proprietary algorithm, which generates multiple combinations of retailer bids to fulfill a shopping list at prices 20% to 30% cheaper than the shopper’s primary store. Ziscuit’s proof-of-concept launch is scheduled for the third quarter of 2021.
The Bronze Valley Accelerator, which was created in partnership with gener8tor, is designed to help startups gain early customer traction on their product or idea and establish metrics that can make them competitive for full-time, equity-based accelerators or for seed investment. More than 150 startups from Alabama and beyond applied to be a part of the program.
The Bronze Valley Accelerator is a free version of gener8tor’s program. The new accelerator is also geared toward helping accelerate the business of underrepresented founders, specifically people of color and women, as well as students at HBCU’s and affiliates.
Bronze Valley is aimed at assisting early-stage startups emerging from Birmingham and the Southeast. The accelerator is supported by the Alabama Department of Commerce and Alabama Power.
