The readers have spoken.
The first round of Atlanta Inno's inaugural Tech Madness competition is officially over. What's Tech Madness, you ask? It's our reader-driven bracket competition in the spirit of March Madness highlighting some of the local startup scene’s biggest, brightest and most exciting technology companies.
During the month of March, 32 Atlanta-based startups will go head-to-head in the bracket and readers like you will decide who goes on to the next round.
Today, we've got the results of round one, and let me say, we had several close calls.
NFANT Labs barely beat out BWHealth by 15 votes---that's clutch right there.
FlockSafety secured the W over HelloPackage with just 33 more votes.
Culture Greetings squeezed out a win over InPharmD with a 27 vote difference. Above all, I think this was the biggest underdog upset from Round 1.
Our top vote receivers were Crescendo, with a total of 289 votes, MailMosh, with 280 votes, and GROUNDFLOOR with 234 votes.
Now, we're releasing Round 2 of Tech Madness.
There are several interesting matchups in Round 2. AGVoice and Trackter, two agricultural startups, are going head-to-head in this round. FlockSafety, which monitors neighborhood safety through surveillance cameras and recently raised $10 million, is up against Bark, a platform that proactively monitors text messages, emails, YouTube and social media, which raised $9 million last August.
When voting, we want you to ask yourself this question: Who would you invest in? Whether you answer that question based on who you think would garner the highest return, the safest investment or which startup really reflects your mission in life is entirely up to you. The startups selected are private, venture-backed or bootstrapped businesses we seeded based on funding and other growth metrics.
Money rules the world, and since funding is our most accessible metric in the startup ecosystem, we used it to determine who would be included in the bracket. The matchups are completely random, with our 32 “teams” divided into four groups that represent Atlanta hip-hop, just for fun: The Migos, OutKast, Boyz N Da Hood and TLC.
The winning company of Tech Madness will win total bragging rights for the rest of the year, and maybe even another little prize to go with it.
The second round of Tech Madness ends Wednesday, March 20, at 11:59 p.m. Vote for your favorite companies then share with friends and colleagues to help us determine a winner.
