Inaugural Montgomery tech accelerator program underway

The Montgomery TechLab (MGM TechLab) this week launched its inaugural tech accelerator program; ten companies from around the country are participating in the 12-week program, which is being conducted virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Companies in the program will develop digital services solutions with applications in the defense, health care and energy industries. During the program, they will receive funding for meeting various milestones and develop relationships with business leaders at regional institutions, including partners at Maxwell Air Force Base and Gunter Annex and Alabama Power Company.

MGM TechLab will also continue to work with participating companies after the program concludes in order to establish a presence and create jobs in the River Region.

“The accelerator program highlights technology-based opportunities in Montgomery that have the potential to attract companies from across the country,” stated Marcus Shaw, founding director of MGM TechLab. “Our partner, MGMWERX has brought market leading experts DCODE and Fearless Tech to the program to mentor, train and coach the companies.”

Charisse Stokes, executive director of the Montgomery Chamber’s TechMGM initiative, advised that this is a significant part of the area’s tech recruitment and development strategy: “The MGM TechLab adds a powerful asset to our area’s tech ecosystem and will catalyze and attract startups and entrepreneurs to launch their businesses and invest in Montgomery.”

The MGM TechLab is joined by other strong innovation assets in the area, including MGMWERX, MGMix and the United States Air Force’s Air University and BESPIN, which are successfully bridging public and private sectors to develop innovative solutions and drive entrepreneurship in Alabama’s capital city.

Created through a public/private partnership between the city, county, local economic development partners, IT companies and the Maxwell-Gunter Community, the nonprofit Montgomery TechLab is the next step in creating an innovation district that will seek to advance the area’s defined technology culture and propel its tech and innovation entrepreneurial ecosystem.

“The Chamber is committed to working with our economic development partners at the local and state level to create opportunities like the MGM TechLab that make the Montgomery area a competitive destination for the startups and tech talent that will bring greater prosperity to our region,” added Anna Buckalew, CEO of the Montgomery Area Chamber of Commerce.

The ten companies in the program come to Montgomery from across the United States:

Analog Teams (Silver Spring, MD) is educating the next generation of globally distributed technical talent to fill the growing demand for technical skills.
At Ease Rentals (Austin, TX) revolutionizes moves and work travel for federal employees through a short-term rental property platform with disruptive features including ease-of-use, reimbursement-transparency, and reliability.
Lucky Rabbit (Dewey Beach, DE) is a digital services firm with experience using lean practices and agile methods to bridge the gap between old and new cultures of government.
MedTrans Go (Atlanta, GA) is a B2B tech-enabled portal that provides healthcare providers access to reliable medical transportation, interpretation, telemedicine, and Rx delivery services in one easy-to-use, integrated digital platform.
Monkton (Tysons Corner, VA) is a federal leader in secure mobility. Monkton builds mission critical apps and infinitely scalable solutions for Federal and commercial customers.
Optimal Technology (Mableton, GA) lowers the cost of electricity bills for commercial customers by combining machine learning-enabled monitoring with high efficiency energy tech.
Remediant (San Francisco, CA) provides enterprises with Privileged Access Management (PAM) software to help them protect their accounts from misuse and abuse.
RIIS (New Braunfels, TX) provides data analytics services business, turning data into answers to real world problems.
Sepio Systems (Rockville, MD) delivers a hardware access control (HAC) platform that reduces the risk of unapproved and rogue devices by providing complete visibility, control, and mitigation of all hardware assets.
Wickr (New York, NY) transforms the way companies and organizations use and build systems that protect valuable, high-target data.