In an incredible upset, the defending champion of Albany's Inno Madness is out of the tournament after the first round.
UCM Digital Health fell to VoyceMe by 87 votes. Now, the challenge is anyone's game.
Two other matchups were neck-and-neck, down to the wire — decided by less than 10 votes each — but ultimately Rocket Science and KeyCapture Energy prevailed.
Eight local startups are left vying for the coveted title of 2023 Inno Madness champion. And the winner is up to you to decide.
Inno Madness is a friendly bracket-style challenge in which readers vote to advance companies based on one question: Who would you invest in?
The bracket is assembled based on editorial input from the Albany Inno team. Seeding was determined in an order based roughly on the amount of funding each startup has raised. Meet the participants below and read the contest rules online.
The goal of Inno Madness is to give a snapshot of some of the most-promising tech companies in the Capital Region. It is by no means a complete list of the Albany region's best startups. It's also not just a list of the 16 most-funded startups in the region. Think of the bracket as just a fun look into tech local companies you need to know in 2023.
Second-round voting begins March 9 and continues through March 14 at noon. Readers can cast one vote per round. We'll open up voting round by round, ultimately crowning an Inno Madness winner on March 30.
A short description of each company remaining is below. Here's the bracket:
The startups still in the challenge
KeyCapture Energy develops, constructs, owns and operates large-scale battery systems that store energy created by hydro, wind or other systems.
Ecovative uses mycelium to develop sustainable replacements for products including packing materials and leather.
Nuvalence focuses on professional services in the cloud computing industry.
Livingston Energy sells custom EV charging stations for electric cars and other vehicles. Each of the stations are connected to the cloud, allowing the company to monitor use of the units and continually push software updates.
Rushdown Studios was founded by three PUBG software engineers that set out to form their own studio. It offers mostly contract work for backend systems of online and multiplayer games.
Helios Life Enterprises is an artificial intelligence company. The Saratoga-based company says it tech can analyze and derive meaning from tonal shifts in speech.
Rocket Science, founded by a local video game industry veteran, fulfills development contracts for other video game companies. The company makes pieces of online multiplayer games.
VoyceMe is a platform for digital comics that now has more than 1 million unique monthly users. Authors can share manga – Japanese-style comics – and webtoons, digital comics that originated in South Korea.
