Chattanooga startup Branch Technology wins Spirit of Innovation award - Chattanooga Times Free Press

Lauren Uzbek, left, and Graham Harrell, center, with MediTract, talk to Tom Wengler during the Spirit of Innovation Awards luncheon and expo Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016 at the Chattanooga Convention Center.

Lauren Uzbek, left, and Graham Harrell, center, with...

Photo by Angela Lewis /Times Free Press.

Branch Technology, a Chattanooga startup company that's going to build what it calls the world's first 3-D printed house here, was the winner Wednesday of the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce's Spirit of Innovation award.

The company was drawn here from Montgomery, Ala., in 2014 by the GigTank, a 12-week "accelerator" program of the Company Lab that helps startup businesses get going, said Platt Boyd, the founder and CEO of Branch Technology.

But Chattanooga's spirit was another draw, he told the crowd gathered for the awards luncheon at the Chattanooga Convention Center.

"It is a spirit that is unafraid," said Boyd, who cited the hang-gliding community here, downtown's redevelopment and EPB's high-speed gigabit-per-second internet as ways in which Chattanooga displays it fearlessness.

Branch Technology, which is located in the Business Development Center on the North Shore, recently had to hire more employees and install more free-form robot arm 3-D printers for a project its doing in Miami, Boyd said.

Branch also held a contest with a $10,000 reward that drew entries from around the world to design a free-form 3D-printed house it will build next year on the campus of Chattanooga State Community College.

Chattanooga's "entrepreneurial ecosystem" has come a long way from 25 years ago, Smart Furniture CEO Stephen Culp told the Chamber audience. Culp, who co-founded a number of startups here, said the "drag-and-drop" online design feature Smart Furniture introduced in 1999 became the industry standard.

"We were kind of a rag-tag bunch," Culp said of Chattanooga's startup scene then.

Culp reeled off a list of efforts that have changed things since then, from the three decades old River City Co., a public-private partnership that's helped revive downtown, to the Dynamo Accelerator and its related $18 million venture capital fund that launched this year to nurture startup businesses in the logistics, transportation and supply chain business.

"The best, I'm pretty positive, is yet to come," Culp said.

Yet, he warned that Chattanooga shouldn't rest on its laurels and become the "most self-congratulatory" mid-sized city in American.

Crime, education and poverty are all big issues that need attention, he said.

Culp said Chattanoogans have the entrepreneurial know-how and spirit to work together to come up with innovative solutions to those social problems.

"The burden is on us," he told the crowd. "We're all entrepreneurs, you're all entrepreneurs and each of you has got what it takes."

Other finalists for the Spirit of Innovation award were Meditract, a business that helps healthcare organizations manage contract workflows, and Skuid, a company that lets companies create apps for their business "without writing a single word of code."

Along with the Spirit of Innovation Award presentation, the Chattanooga Technology Council honored Early Innovator companies Aegle Gear, Collider and i-Card. The Young Innovator Award, presented by Office Depot, recognized fifth-grader Maya Halenar and seventh-grader Jackson Manning, both at Normal Park Museum Magnet, and 12th-grader Ellie Betts, STEM School Chattanooga.

Contact staff writer Tim Omarzu at tomarzu@timesfreepress.com or http://www.facebook.com/MeetsForBusiness or http://twitter.com/meetforbusiness or 423-757-6651.

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