2022 A-LIST Award Winners

Posted on 08/05/2022 by Bryce Bencivengo

On Wednesday, August 3 the Austin Chamber in partnership with SXSW held the 11th Annual A-LIST Awards. This event is designed to recognize homegrown companies in various growth stages. These companies are developing new ways to connect with customers while transforming their industries and creating a robust culture for their employees. For the first time this year, the A-LIST Awards also honored Investors of the Year.

The event was held at the Long Center for the Performing Arts with both a VIP reception beforehand and an after-party following the event with live music, food, and drinks.

This year for the A-LIST Awards, we had more than 100 incredible nominees across a broad spectrum of sectors and different stages. Thirty three volunteer judges, who are active investors, entrepreneurs, and leaders in the business community, evaluated these nominations.The categories for the A-LIST Awards were:

- Bootstrapped (Self-funded businesses)
- Angel & Seed ($10,000 to $2 million in investment)
- Early Stage (A or B Series funding, $2 million to $33 million)
- Later Stage (C series or later, greater than $33 million)
- Investor of the Year (Open to angel investors and venture capital firms)

We are excited to share this year's winners with you.

  • Bootstrapped Category Winner

    KUNGFU.AI
    KUNGFU.AI helps companies adopt and transform around AI. By 2025 if companies are not leaning into AI, they will be behind. We help companies establish their AI strategy, develop custom solutions, and optimize their investment to ultimately transform their business using artificial intelligence.

  • Angel & Seed Category Winner

    Afia
    Afia     is a story of perseverance and rebirth. Using a recipe book passed through generations that survived war in Syria. The Mediterranean food company is a mission-driven organization dedicated to authentic, diverse cuisine and giving back to its community. Founded in 2017 by Farrah Moussallati Sibai, Afia was an opportunity for Farrah to introduce the American grocery shopper to popular flavors from her home and also give her fellow Middle Easterners a sense of place on the grocery shelves that she missed when she first came to the United States.

  • Early Stage Category Winner

    FloorFound
    FloorFound's     solution cuts through these complexities that have made resale prohibitively difficult for oversized items and allows brands to quickly launch robust, full-scale recommerce programs that meet and exceed consumer expectations. Without reverse logistics processes to handle the return and resale of large items, recommerce programs have historically been out of reach and unavailable for oversized products, until now.

  • Later Stage Category Winner

    AffiniPay
    AffiniPay     helps professionals in all industries get paid faster so they can focus on what is important - their business and helping their clients with the issues they’re facing. They've taken the friction out of a key piece to running their business effectively so they can do what they are good at! Their proprietary payment technology has built industry-specific online payment solutions for the legal, accounting, design, and association industries that allow professionals to easily accept client payments and securely.

  • Angel Investor of the Year

    Andrea Kalmans of Lontra Ventures
    Lontra Ventures     is an Austin, Texas-based entrepreneurial consultancy with two core specialties:
    Life Science Consulting: Specialty Drug Commercialization & Selling Value Added Services to Pharmaceutical Manufacturers
    Technology: Business Development & Strategic Sales for High-Growth Companies

  • Venture Capital Investor of the Year

    LiveOak Venture Partners
    LiveOak Venture Partners     is an Austin-based, early-stage venture capital firm that partners with visionary entrepreneurs to build world class, category dominating companies. They focus on providing first institutional capital for tech and tech-enabled services companies based in Texas. They are entrepreneur-first, multi-segment, and full life-cycle investors.

Congratulations to all our A-LIST winners and finalists.

See all 2022 A-LIST Finalists

Related Categories: Events