{"344931":{"#nid":"344931","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Launching and Building Companies","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003EWritten by John Toon\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EPublished in Research Horizons Summer 2014\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhen he enrolled as a Ph.D. student in Georgia Tech\u2019s College of Computing five years ago, Vijay Balasubramaniyan never expected to become the CEO of one of Atlanta\u2019s hottest young information security companies.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBut, today, the phone call fingerprinting technique he developed provides the foundation for Pindrop Security, a three-year-old company that has attracted $12 million in investment from Andreessen Horowitz, one of Silicon Valley\u2019s most prestigious venture capital firms. Pindrop counts top U.S. companies among its customers; these include two of the nation\u2019s five largest banks.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFrom an office in Midtown, near Georgia Tech\u2019s Technology Square, the company is building a business to help battle the multi-billion dollar problem of fraud committed using the telephone.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAs Pindrop\u2019s CEO, Balasubramaniyan handles duties that are vastly different from those of his Ph.D. days. He\u2019s meeting with marketing and engineering staff, dashing off to customer meetings on the West Coast, and glancing at a large computer screen that monitors potentially fraudulent calls going into the call centers of Pindrop\u2019s customers.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOn March 27, 2014, Pindrop became one of three companies to graduate from the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), Georgia Tech\u2019s startup incubator. ATDC was established 34 years ago to create technology jobs and economic growth for the state of Georgia.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe three graduate companies \u2013 Pindrop, MessageGears and SalesLoft \u2013 show ATDC\u2019s technology diversity.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Ch3\u003EPindrop Security: Flagging Fraudulent Calls\u003C\/h3\u003E\u003Cp\u003EEach type of handset and each telephone network has its own unique audio characteristics. Caller ID can be spoofed to indicate that a request for a new credit card or wire transfer of money is coming from Atlanta. But if the call is really coming from a Skype phone in Nigeria, Pindrop Security can tell.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe are trying to bring trust back to the telephone,\u201d said Balasubramaniyan, who co-founded Pindrop in 2011. \u201cWe extract about 147 different features from the audio of the call. These features uniquely identify the phone as well as what type of device is making the call and where in the world that call is coming from. That allows us to differentiate what is a legitimate call and what is a fraudulent call.\u201d\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBanks, financial institutions, retailers, and others now attempt to verify calls by asking for personal information: a caller\u2019s hometown, mother\u2019s maiden name, or high school attended. In the old days, this information was known only to the callers, but thanks to the Internet and services such as Facebook, such personal data can be readily available to fraudsters.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELarge companies are fighting these fraudsters by capturing their voiceprints and maintaining lists of bad phone numbers. But those work only after the first fraudulent call and can be defeated if the fraudsters can alter their voices.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn the fall of 2010, at a major computer security conference, Balasubramaniyan presented the concept of \u201cacoustic fingerprinting\u201d phone calls. He was joined by Mustaque Ahamad, then director of the Georgia Tech Information Security Center, and Patrick Traynor, an associate professor in the Georgia Tech School of Computer Science. The presentation ignited a frenzy of media coverage, which attracted a flood of inquiries from banks and financial services companies.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBalasubramaniyan was then invited to present at a major financial services conference, which heightened the interest. \u201cAt that point, we knew we had a technology that could be commercialized,\u201d he recalled.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBalasubramaniyan partnered with Paul Judge, a repeat entrepreneur who holds a Georgia Tech Ph.D., to co-found Pindrop. \u201cAtlanta has good ideas and technical geniuses who deserve a global stage,\u201d said Judge. \u201cMy focus is working to turn a good idea into a great company.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EPindrop worked with Georgia Tech\u2019s VentureLab program, which helps faculty members and research staff commercialize technology developed in research labs. It also got assistance with a proposal to the National Science Foundation for a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant, which provided early funding to help develop the technology. More assistance came from the Georgia Research Alliance (GRA), which offered seed funding, and Flashpoint, a Georgia Tech program that accelerates the growth of technology companies.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe success path led to ATDC, which helped connect Pindrop to a broad range of resources.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cATDC has constantly helped us to be bigger than we actually are,\u201d said Balasubramaniyan. \u201cWhen you are dealing with really large banks, you want great conference rooms and office space. You want a great look and feel for when you bring customers to your offices. ATDC has helped significantly with that.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBalasubramaniyan previously worked for several leading technology companies. At those companies, he helped build network management software and other commercially important applications following a clear solution map.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWhen I came to Georgia Tech, I was working on purely hard problems, really difficult problems for which the solutions weren\u2019t clear,\u201d he said. \u201cAt Pindrop, we have this unique opportunity to work on problems that are not only hard, but also meaningful. To hear our customers talk about situations where we have protected somebody\u2019s life savings or somebody\u2019s retirement account, on a day-to-day basis, that is what makes this job really meaningful.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Ch3\u003EMessageGears: Meeting Email Customization Challenges\u003C\/h3\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESophisticated companies carefully tailor their email marketing campaigns based on what they know about their customers. But the information needed to produce custom campaigns usually resides in databases behind secure firewalls, while the emails themselves must be sent from a \u0022software-as-service\u0022 (SAS) system located outside the firewall.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMessageGears, another 2014 graduate of Georgia Tech\u2019s ATDC, has developed a product that allows companies to have the best of both these worlds.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThe challenge for the kinds of customers we are selling to is that they have lots of data they need to use in the messages to personalize the messages,\u201d said Dan Roy, CEO of the company. \u201cWhat we have done with our technology is split the challenge in half. The delivery system is an SAS-based component, and we manage deliverability for our customers. But the software itself runs on premise and connects directly to our customers\u2019 databases.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFounded in 2010, the company now has about 50 customers, including such names as GEICO and Activision.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe measure our success by our growth in message volume,\u201d said Roy. \u201cWe are sending more than 100 million messages a month now, and our goal is to get to a billion messages by the end of next year.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMessageGears connected to ATDC through friends who were familiar with the organization. Roy had worked for a Silicon Valley startup, so he had heard of the organization. But MessageGears was his first time as a CEO.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThis was new territory with me, and I just wanted to get immersed into a community of other entrepreneurs to learn the ropes,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery entrepreneur has to think about funding and fundraising from the very beginning. We had some seed funding when we started the company, but we knew that was going to run out pretty quickly before we built a customer base and started getting revenue.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EATDC helped explain fundraising and provided information that Roy and the company\u2019s co-founders needed to interact with the investor community and consider their choices.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIt was very valuable to us, and I\u2019m not even sure where we would be without the support of ATDC,\u201dhe added.\u201cThe formal ATDC organization is great, but just being in a community of other entrepreneurs, people who are in a similar situation to us, is very helpful.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Ch3\u003ESalesLoft: Finding Prospects Using the Internet\u003C\/h3\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFinding appropriate sales prospects can be one of a company\u2019s greatest challenges. Manually searching the Internet is one way. SalesLoft is a better way, said Kyle Porter, the company\u2019s CEO \u2013 and a Georgia Tech graduate.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cSalesLoft builds a platform that gives marketers, sales professionals, and prospectors the ability to build accurate and targeted lists of leads just using information on the Internet,\u201d he explained. \u201cSomeone can come onto SalesLoft and say, \u2018I want to talk with VPs of manufacturing in the Boston area with company sizes between 50 and 200 employees.\u2019 Our software allows them to collect all that information on the Web, adds in a bunch of demographic fields, finds phone numbers and email addresses, then synchs to popular CRM systems.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EPorter and co-founder David Cummings started SalesLoft in late 2011. By 2012, SalesLoft was recognized as one of the top 10 most innovative companies in Georgia by the Technology Association of Georgia. In the last year, they\u2019ve added 12,000 new users.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EPorter credits Rob Forman and Tim Dorr \u2013 also a Georgia Tech graduate \u2013 for building a great product.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESalesLoft\u2019s path to the ATDC began with a delivery accident. In 2004, Porter had partnered on a real estate investment with Lloyd Solomon, then CEO of ATDC member company Quellan. One day, a package addressed to Quellan was accidentally delivered to Porter. While dropping the package off to Solomon at ATDC\u2019s Centergy headquarters, Porter received a tour of the incubator and was bitten by the startup bug.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHe took a job with a human resources company in the building and spent the next five years developing a network of CEOs, entrepreneurs, service providers, and investors.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWhen we started SalesLoft in 2011, we immediately joined ATDC as a select member and have had a ton of value from the Industry Connect program,\u201d Porter said. \u201cWe have been able to address a lot of our business challenges. For me as a first-time CEO, there were a lot of the things that I had never dealt with before, and these guys have been able to walk me through and help with those challenges. It has been awesome to have them almost like an extra founder on the team.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Ch3\u003EATDC: Building a Technology Ecosystem\u003C\/h3\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThese three companies demonstrate the kind of diversity that we have in the ATDC,\u201d said K.P. Reddy, an entrepreneur, author, and Georgia Tech graduate who served as the incubator\u2019s interim general manager. \u201cIf you look at any ecosystem \u2013 and we are part of a larger technology ecosystem \u2013 diversity like this is what drives its health.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EATDC assists companies spinning out of Georgia Tech, those headed up by Georgia Tech alumni, and companies that have no direct Georgia Tech connection. The common denominator is a fit with the ATDC program.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EATDC emphasizes coaching, support from a community of entrepreneurs, and connections to a broad range of resources. The companies receive access to Georgia Tech resources: students, faculty, and research facilities. Additionally, they can connect to industry giants such as AT\u0026amp;T, which recently located one of its Foundry product development centers in Technology Square to be close to the startup community there.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe are not trying move the needle 5 percent or 10 percent,\u201d Reddy explained. \u201cWe are trying to make orders of magnitude differences for startup companies. We are able to help companies do much more than they could on their own.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EEach of the 2014 graduates cites a different benefit from ATDC, which isn\u2019t surprising, said Reddy.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe are all about supporting entrepreneurs,\u201d he explained. \u201cIt isn\u2019t just about space. It isn\u2019t just about coaching or mentoring. It isn\u2019t just about investors or customers. We have all the things that an entrepreneur needs at ATDC.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAmong the newest programs are Industry Connect and Campus Connect. Industry Connect brings in representatives from Atlanta\u2019s largest corporations to learn about startups that may have solutions to the challenges they face. In 2013, ATDC\u2019s Industry Connect program facilitated more than 20 contracts between ATDC startups and Global 1000 companies.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ECampus Connect helps ATDC companies leverage Georgia Tech resources, connecting them to one of the nation\u2019s top 10 publicly supported universities, with a science and engineering research program that is among the largest in the United States.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThere is a lot of brain power and a lot of talent at Georgia Tech, and we are leveraging that,\u201d said Reddy. \u201cBeing connected to a top university really makes a difference.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAnd, the Georgia Tech connections extend beyond faculty and research assistance. A recent career fair held with the Georgia Tech College of Computing and School of Electrical and Computer Engineering attracted 150 students, who learned about opportunities at 25 startups. Internships and new hires will likely result, Reddy said.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EATDC companies tend to fall into two categories: those with high market risk and low technical risk \u2013 such as social media companies \u2013 and those with high technical risk and low market risk, including many of the science-based startups spinning out of Georgia Tech. Those two groups help one another, and build a robust ecosystem.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cOur scientists have to learn how to market, and our marketers have to learn about science,\u201d Reddy noted. \u201cThat\u2019s where the ecosystem gets really strong.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EReddy believes ATDC has a great reputation, one that should make it top of mind for any technology entrepreneur in Georgia.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIf I\u2019m looking for hash browns, I go to Waffle House,\u201d he added. \u201cIf I\u2019m going to start a company, I go to ATDC.\u201d\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":[{"value":"Georgia Tech\u2019s Advanced Technology Development Center is a Startup Powerhouse"}],"field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EThe Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) is Georgia Tech\u2019s technology incubator, which helps entrepreneurs launch and build companies. ATDC graduated three companies in Spring 2014; this story describes how the incubator worked with them.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"The Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) is Georgia Tech\u2019s technology incubator, which helps entrepreneurs launch and build companies."}],"uid":"28152","created_gmt":"2014-11-12 15:55:30","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:17:30","author":"Claire Labanz","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","extras":[],"hg_media":{"346181":{"id":"346181","type":"image","title":"Centergy Building, ATDC Headquarters","body":null,"created":"1449245670","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 16:14:30","changed":"1475895068","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:51:08","alt":"Centergy Building, ATDC Headquarters","file":{"fid":"201940","name":"atdc-centergy-building2_0.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/atdc-centergy-building2_0_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/atdc-centergy-building2_0_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":1343870,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/atdc-centergy-building2_0_0.jpg?itok=TcQkkTrF"}},"346191":{"id":"346191","type":"image","title":"ATDC\u0027s Hall of Fame","body":null,"created":"1449245670","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 16:14:30","changed":"1475895068","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:51:08","alt":"ATDC\u0027s Hall of Fame","file":{"fid":"200925","name":"atdc-company-awards.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/atdc-company-awards_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/atdc-company-awards_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":3706467,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/atdc-company-awards_0.jpg?itok=JQBee6x9"}},"346201":{"id":"346201","type":"image","title":"Pindrop CEO Vijay Balasubramaniyan","body":null,"created":"1449245670","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 16:14:30","changed":"1475895068","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:51:08","alt":"Pindrop CEO Vijay Balasubramaniyan","file":{"fid":"200926","name":"pindrop_edit_fin.still004.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/pindrop_edit_fin.still004_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/pindrop_edit_fin.still004_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":438200,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/pindrop_edit_fin.still004_0.jpg?itok=dVl6Qc75"}},"346211":{"id":"346211","type":"image","title":"MessageGears CEO Dan Roy","body":null,"created":"1449245670","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 16:14:30","changed":"1475895068","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:51:08","alt":"MessageGears CEO Dan Roy","file":{"fid":"200927","name":"messagegears_edit_fin.still003.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/messagegears_edit_fin.still003_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/messagegears_edit_fin.still003_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":315047,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/messagegears_edit_fin.still003_0.jpg?itok=mYaI4aG-"}},"346221":{"id":"346221","type":"image","title":"SalesLoft CEO Kyle Porter","body":null,"created":"1449245670","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 16:14:30","changed":"1475895068","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:51:08","alt":"SalesLoft CEO Kyle Porter","file":{"fid":"200928","name":"salesloft_edit_fin.still005.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/salesloft_edit_fin.still005_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/salesloft_edit_fin.still005_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":328976,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/salesloft_edit_fin.still005_0.jpg?itok=0RFyZwEp"}}},"media_ids":["346181","346191","346201","346211","346221"],"groups":[{"id":"1188","name":"Research Horizons"}],"categories":[{"id":"42941","name":"Art Research"}],"keywords":[{"id":"9193","name":"accelerator"},{"id":"4238","name":"atdc"},{"id":"4239","name":"incubator"},{"id":"166973","name":"startup"},{"id":"171387","name":"Summer 2014 issue"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39501","name":"People and Technology"}],"news_room_topics":[{"id":"106361","name":"Business and Economic Development"}],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"ATDC\u0026nbsp;info@atdc.org\u0026nbsp;(404) 894-3575","format":"limited_html"}],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}