For years, Katie Begando bought the same running shoes without trying them on. But during her half marathon training, a redesigned model left her frustrated. After reading blogs and trying multiple pairs, she realized she just wanted to talk to someone like herself, who shares her needs and preferences. That frustration led to the creation of Bluubird.

Kavya Mohankumar and Pranavi Gogineni’s startup journey started on an evening bus ride as college students. As they talked, a bigger question emerged: What do you see yourself doing in the future? Today, they are co-founders and CEOs of Kintic, which provides training data for humanoid robots. But Kintic wasn’t what they originally set out to build. Their first stop? Three pivots.

While Esco Eats built its reputation on a single dessert, their World Famous Apple Cobbler PIE, the company’s CEO and co-founder, Anita Lamb, sees the pie as a means rather than an end. “It’s an experience and a tool to engage people and build community. The pie is a vehicle.”

Tech Square is full of people you'd want to know and mostly haven't met yet. Maestro is a new ecosystem connection platform built to help you find and reach the right people across the community, whether that's a co-founder, a collaborator, or just the person who runs your trail every morning.

Anish Cheekati spent years on the pre-med track, gaining experience as a medical assistant and volunteering in clinics. His plans shifted after working with patients who often struggled to manage their various medications without guidance. This inspired him to create Voyage Health, a free AI-powered health guidance platform.

When high school students, Pranshu Raithatha and Harsh Mehta, needed to focus on their coursework, they realized they were scrolling on social media apps. After trying application after application, they asked a behavioral design question to explore the root of the challenge of focused attention as they set out to build Mivo Scrolling: “Can a brief pause at the exact moment someone opens social media help turn an impulse into an intentional choice?”

Earlier this year, Hypepotamus covered ATDC’s push to become a launchpad for Georgia-based AI companies. One of the companies building currently inside ATDC isn’t just building AI tools. They are a team ensuring organizations don’t get left behind in the AI Age. 

When the Georgia Tech Food and Beverage Accelerator (GT.FBA) launched its first cohort in January 2025, the program set out to help food and beverage entrepreneurs take their products from home kitchens to retail shelves. One year later, the results speak for themselves.

Daniel Beecham switched majors, failed out twice and watched his first startup fold. Now his company Propagent is betting that AI can take the chaos out of proposal work, and ATDC is betting on him.

Starting a company had been an ongoing goal of Woonsun Song’s, including when he was previously working at a cryptocurrency startup. And being part of the winning team of DARPA’s Artificial Intelligence Cyber Challenge in August 2025 gave Song the opportunity to pursue his goal of founding QED Audit, which is focused on making critical software more secure.

Most startups spend years and marketing budget building a brand from nothing. Vettex Sports used its Georgia Tech connections to skip that step to build under a name that already had history. 

More than 70 percent of families with special needs children stay home rather than participate in everyday activities. Ashley Hanchett is building a platform to change that.

“I didn’t start Unicoils to build 'just another hair brand.” I started it because women with textured hair—especially students like me—were doing everything right and still not seeing growth,” said Dajheonna Perry, Founder of Unicoils. Dajheonna is a Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business MBA alum, CREATE-X founder, and licensed cosmetologist growing Unicoils, a natural hair care brand focused on retention and scalp health.

‍Startup ecosystems have traditionally been measured by how much funding has been raised, the number of exits, or planned initial public offerings, but these only tell part of a larger story. Consider instead “Network Impact Accounting” and how it provides a framework for measuring the economic value created through trusted relationships inside innovation ecosystems.

Mehul Jasti, a computer science sophomore at Georgia Tech, isn’t leaving his academic goals up to luck. Instead, he developed JustLmk, an application that lets you be the first to know when availability or restrictions change so you can sign up for the courses you need to graduate on time.