ATLANTA — It’s the first day of Venture Atlanta, one of the country’s largest venture capital conferences connecting startups with investors — and five metro Atlanta companies are taking center stage.
These startups each secured $100,000 as part of a new program launched by gener8tor and Pinnacle Financial Partners to support under resourced founders in metro Atlanta.
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The companies — selected from more than 80 applicants based on their growth potential and investor readiness — will receive coaching, investor connections, and more than $1 million in deals and perks over a 12-week program, culminating in a showcase event this winter.
The selected startups include:
- Billseye – a mobile billing app for service professionals
- Blended – a financial platform for divorced and single-parent families
- Guala – a social point-of-sale and merchant wallet for micro-sellers
- LUXE AI – an AI concierge that maximizes credit card rewards
- Pagarva – a multilingual mobile point-of-sale platform for immigrant-owned businesses
Keena Pierre, a nurse-turned-investor passionate about democratizing access to capital and opportunity, is leading the 12-week accelerator.
“For many of the companies we brought in, this is their first investment into their startup, so a lot of these companies they bootstrapped,” said Pierre, managing director at gener8tor. “Providing mentors, investors, and all of the support needed in addition to an investment.”
Pierre said the program aims to close the gap for entrepreneurs who are often overlooked by venture capitalists.
“We’re filling a huge gap, less than 1% of founders that are perceived as minorities — they’re overlooked. They’re not receiving venture capital,” she said.
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One of those founders is Caetano Nobre, the creator of Pagarva, an app designed to make transactions easier for immigrant-owned small businesses.
“We realized early on micro businesses in America. They struggle, juggling with Zelle, Venmo, CashApp, debit/credit cards,” Nobre said.
“We tried to solve this problem by giving them one single mobile app they can use to receive all payment methods, and the money gets instantly deposited directly in their bank account,” he added.
Nobre told Channel 2’s Eryn Rogers his app is for everyone but specifically supports small business owners who use a second language and have between one and 10 employees.
“Almost 2.2 million business owners in America, they struggle with English, so we tried to fix that,” he said.
Nobre plans to use the investment to prepare his company for a major rollout ahead of the 2026 World Cup, when millions of visitors are expected to flood Atlanta.
“Those resources are going to be invested 100% and take us to version 2,” he said.
About 70% of U.S. payment transactions are already running through Atlanta, the initiative doubles down on the city’s role as “Transaction Alley.”
Investors say Atlanta continues to grow as a major fintech hub because of the number of payment processing companies based here.
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