2017 in Southern Startups: Major Deals & Memorable Moments

About the author: Mallory Whitfield is the Director of Marketing at LookFar and host of the #BadassCreatives podcast. 

2017 was a rollercoaster of a year. Natural disasters affected seemingly every part of the world last year, and Hurricanes Harvey and Irma hit particularly close to home, wreaking havoc on the Southern states of Texas and Florida.

The year in tech was similarly tumultuous. Our best efforts to fight to save Net Neutrality failed and more than 143 million Americans were left vulnerable in the wake of the Equifax security breach. #MeToo became the hashtag that grabbed back, as sexual harassment claims surfaced unrelentingly in Silicon Valley, Hollywood and everywhere in between.

But 2017 wasn’t all bad news. Cryptocurrency became such a buzzworthy topic that even our older relatives were talking about it at the holiday dinner table. And while the jury is still out on whether Bitcoin is the Myspace of the cryptocurrency world, there is plenty of investment opportunity to go around in the tech world.

Southern startups brought in more than $4 billion in venture capital last year, and there were some pretty impressive acquisitions and investments across the South throughout 2017. But don’t take our word for it, the news speaks for itself.

Click here to read all the New Orleans tech highlights as well as details about all of the major deals from 2017.