Engage Ventures

Blake Patton is the Managing Partner of both Engage and its fund manager, Tech Square Ventures. He is supported by Partner Bill Nussey, Director of Corporate Insights Hari Gopal, and Corporate Insights Lead Akshita Iyer. The Engage program's collaborative sourcing process draws on a cross-corporate board of Fortune 500 executives including Delta CEO Ed Bastian and Inspire Brands CEO Paul Brown, but investment decisions for the Engage fund are executed by the Tech Square Ventures team.

Engage uses a proprietary cross-corporate insights engine developed in conjunction with Georgia Tech's Enterprise Innovation Institute. The team develops data-driven market theses to identify enterprise startups, then recruits them into cohorts. The sourcing network includes referrals from the partner corporations themselves — 16 major firms spanning logistics, retail, financial services, healthcare, and energy — plus the broader venture community and Georgia Tech's technology commercialization pipeline.

It operates as both, but the accelerator is the organizing structure. Engage runs a 10-week go-to-market program for cohorts of 6–8 companies twice a year, focused on enterprise sales readiness. The attached Engage fund, managed by Tech Square Ventures, is a strategic investor that deploys capital into companies selected for the program. The dual structure means startups receive both commercial access and investment capital.

Yes. The firm's model is built to create the conditions for follow-on investment, often alongside its corporate partners. Delta Air Lines directly invested in Vyv's Series A after the startup completed the Engage program, and both The Home Depot and Delta participated in Deep North's $25 million Series A. Engage facilitates these commercial-to-investment pipelines but does not publicly commit to pro-rata follow-on rights as a structural rule.

Engage identifies six strategic themes on its website: Customer Experience, Supply Chain & Manufacturing, Future of Work, Big Data, Analytics & Security, Logistics & Mobility, and Climate Tech & Sustainability. The firm focuses exclusively on B2B enterprise technology companies. It does not target consumer, biotech, or deeptech outside these enterprise framework domains.

Engage was launched by Tech Square Ventures as its corporate innovation and accelerator platform. The Engage fund is managed by Tech Square Ventures, and Blake Patton serves as Managing Partner of both entities. The team overlaps substantially — Partner Bill Nussey supports early-stage investments at Tech Square Ventures while overseeing the growth of the Engage program and fund. Engage operates under the same umbrella but with a distinct mandate focused on corporate-startup collaboration.

Engage is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, and its startup portfolio skews heavily toward the Southeast United States — 70% of its portfolio companies are Southeast-headquartered, with 40% based in Atlanta specifically. The corporate partner network is overwhelmingly concentrated in Atlanta as well, anchored by firms like The Coca-Cola Company, The Home Depot, Delta Air Lines, and UPS. There is no indication of additional offices outside the city.