Birmingham’s Sloss Tech Shows The Magic City’s Startup Ecosystem Is Ready To Scale
BIRMINGHAM (June 30) Hypepotamus – “Sloss” carries a bit of magic in the City of Birmingham, Alabama. Sloss Furnaces was one of the early companies that put “The Magic City” on the map as an industrial and machinery hub seemingly overnight.
Today, the word Sloss holds a different meaning for the tech community…and it represents a new chapter for the city’s innovation ecosystem.
Sloss Tech, Birmingham’s premier annual tech conference, took place last week and brought together more than 1,000 founders, developers, investors, and ecosystem leaders to sites across the city center. Hypepotamus was on the ground during Sloss Tech, taking in the panels, pitch competitions, and networking events. The main takeaways? Birmingham has the core tech infrastructure already in place and is ready to help the next generation of entrepreneurs grow and scale.
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A Community Mission
Birmingham’s tech scene is written in its skyline. When walking around downtown, you cannot miss the buildings for Shipt and Fleetio, two homegrown unicorn companies in ecommerce and automotive, respectively. During Sloss Tech, the entire city became the venue. Tech leaders from across the country gathered in buildings throughout downtown to experience the award-winning restaurants, historic theaters, and vibrant culture that the Magic City has to offer.
Central to Birmingham’s tech ecosystem is its network of accelerators and tech-focused programs. The state is home to Prosper HealthTech, Techstars EnergyTech, two programs housed inside Innovation Depot, as well as AppThink and a studio inside Harmony Venture Labs.
Startup-focused spaces are all over the city as well. Innovation Depot serves as the massive, central gathering point for the ecosystem. Located just outside the downtown core, the 140,000-square-foot site serves as a first office for many local founders.
Meanwhile, on historic Morris Avenue, Harmony Venture Labs provides a home for creators with Venture Yards, a collaborative workspace optimized for modern builders and corporate innovators. In the center of the city is Forge, a coworking space for small business owners and founders that serves as a bustling hub throughout the work week. Outside of town, Forge Flex is opening up this summer as a space for builders, tradesmen, and entrepreneurs who need more than a warehouse, but less than traditional commercial space.
Founder infrastructure in the city has also evolved to support the realities of real life. Homegrown startup Moxi offers a modern solution for busy parents by providing flexible, drop-in childcare options.
Inside Sloss Tech
Thursday marked the first full day of programming, which kicked off with main-stage keynotes at the historic Lyric Theatre before expanding into specialized breakout sessions across downtown. Topics ranged from regional talent development to practical strategies for AI data readiness to Alabama’s DefenseTech world, followed by a Sloss Tech Street Party at City Walk. Throughout the day, technical teams converged at the McWane Science Center for Sloss Tech DEV.
Friday morning shifted the spotlight onto the next generation of builders with the Innovate Alabama Student Innovation Competition. Student teams from the University of Alabama, Samford University, and the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) pitched their startups live on stage for a shot at $20,000 in non-dilutive funding.
The winning trophy went to HelpHand, a startup co-founded by lifelong friends Troup Wallace and Ty Nelson. Driven by their Christian faith, the duo moved to Alabama to attend Samford University. As students, they recognized a gap in the gig economy. HelpHand allows users to source on-demand local help from college kids. The most common requests on the app centering around moving assistance, yard work, and realtor-focused help for one-off house jobs.
After their win, Wallace and Nelson told Hypepotamus that they are “putting their full heart” into the platform and are looking to scale the platform throughout the Southeast.
Back on the main stage, Friday’s Sloss Tech events wrapped up with a keynote from Wikipedia co-founder and Alabama native Jimmy Wales. Born and raised in Huntsville before attending Auburn University and the University of Alabama, Wales returned to Birmingham to talk about the evolving tech scene in the state.
Word On The Sloss Tech Streets
The conference drew a truly global crowd. Attendees this year traveled from London, New York, Texas, California, and every corner of the Southeast to take part in the Sloss Tech experience. Crisscrossing downtown between panels, Hypepotamus repeatedly talked to fellow attendees, all first-timers in Birmingham who were genuinely surprised by the Magic City’s tech footprint.
Birmingham’s deep tech community stood out to out-of-town attendees like Ajay Yadav, a Los Angeles-based tech founder and content creator. Yadav traveled to Birmingham directly from France after attending The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. After touching down in Alabama for the very first time, Yadav told Hypepotamus that he was “deeply impressed” by the radical hospitality and collaborative spirit of the local tech scene, all while enjoying Birmingham’s quirky cocktail scene and globally recognized restaurants.
Startups to watch
At the center of Sloss Tech was, of course, the founders building in Alabama. If you are looking to keep tabs on the most promising local innovations, here are the Magic City startups to watch:
Linq: Driving the future of networking through smart digital business cards and enterprise contact management tools.
Nyad: Providing innovative software engineering and cutting-edge technical architecture solutions. Hypepotamus feature here.
Croux: A specialized talent platform connecting hospitality workers with flexible shifts at top-tier restaurants and venues.
Con.doit: Utilizing digital twin technology and advanced engineering to automate, map, and analyze complex commercial electrical systems. Hypepotamus feature here.
Landing: A network of flexible, fully-furnished apartments that allow members to live and move freely across the country.
VeroSkills: Combating the tech talent shortage by providing accessible online technical education and direct hiring pipelines. Hypepotamus feature here.
Pye: Engineering next-generation self-service kiosks and automated payment solutions for the retail and hospitality sectors. Hypepotamus feature here.
Watershed Health: A powerful clinical collaboration platform built to streamline communication between healthcare providers.
QuantHub: Driving critical enterprise efficiency by upskilling workforces in data literacy and AI readiness. Hypepotamus feature here.
KrillPay: Disrupting the fintech space with streamlined, digital cross-border payment rails designed for modern global citizens.
