Atlanta is one of the country’s top cities for black entrepreneurs. In fact, according to a recent Survey of Business Owners (SBO), distributed by the U.S. Census Bureau, the State of Georgia ranked second (behind New York) for having the most black-owned companies in the United States. Most notably known as the black professional mecca, the rise and fall of the infamous freaknik and the birthplace of Martin Luther King, Atlanta is also home to the third largest base of Fortune 500 companies in the Southeast. The Atlanta metro area and Georgia as a whole has seen a large increase in the number of black-owned businesses, and more importantly the largest number of sustainable black businesses with figures that are three times higher than the national average for all races!

The Atlanta metro region is a hotspot for black startup founders, with many of the major assets in place for a very vibrant startup ecosystem especially as it relates to opportunities for Black startup founders. In fact, a number of our featured startups in this article are actually designed to help fellow entrepreneurs scale, illustrating the uniquely minority startup-friendly nature of Atlanta. In 2016 and 2017 Mayor Kasim Reed announced new partnerships and Innovation funds, which include supporting the expansion of DigitalUndivided from New York to Atlanta with the BIG a Co-Working Space and accelerator for Black and Latina Women to TechSquare and Morehouse’s Angel Investment Accreditation Program.

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by Felecia Hatcher