Tag Blog

AccelerEyes bags GRA/TAG Biz Launch comp.

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/atlanta/blog/atlantech/2009/06/accelereyes_bags_gratag_biz_launch_competition.html
Atlanta Business Chronicle

AccelerEyes has won the GRA/TAG Business Launch Competition — pocketing prestige and $300,000 in cash and services.

The Atlanta startup develops software tools to allow applications to run on graphics processing units. GPUs are ten times faster than CPUs and allow computers to process information faster and be more productive.

AccelerEyes CEO John Melonakos said he was “ecstatic” about winning.

The business competition was an opportunity to get “great feedback from seasoned VCs and entrepreneurs,” the 29-year-old entrepreneur said.

David Eckoff, a semi-finalist judge, said was impressed with AccelerEyes’ “strength of their management, value proposition and core technology IP.”

The publicity and interest generated from the win is also likely to help AccelerEyes raise the $500,000 in seed funding.

AccelerEyes competed with finalists Band Metrics and TalentSoup in the annual competition, organized by the Georgia Research Alliance and the Technology Association of Georgia.

This year’s GRA/TAG competition focused on Internet Technology, which includes companies developing products, online services or technologies that use or extend the reach, flexibility, and ease of the Internet.

Band Metrics, a TechCrunch50 2008 semi-finalist, helps bands, musicians and music industry professionals understand their popularity by aggregating online information about how many times their music has been played, purchased or shared. Read AtlanTech’s review here.

TalentSoup is an Internet service that provides a highly efficient matching engine to connect talent with advertising projects.