Cue the music to Queen's classic "We Are The Champions" because we have a winner in the 2023 Austin Inno Madness bracket challenge.
After battling through four rounds of voting, Babson Diagnostics has been named champion.
It was a close final match between Babson Diagnostics and Grazzy, with thousands of reader votes being cast. After Austin Inno and Austin Business Journal editors vetted the voting results to eliminate multiple votes from single IP addresses, Babson came away with a few hundred more votes.
Please join Inno in congratulating Babson Diagnostics.
But, really, everyone participating is a winner in our eyes. Inno Madness, which was sponsored this year by international law firm Morrison Foerster, was created to generate awareness for some of Austin's most innovative companies. After taking nominations, Inno seeded the bracket largely based on how much venture backing each startup had raised. Then, we asked readers to vote for the companies they'd most like to invest in.
All 32 startups had strong showing this year. Click here for a quick look back at each round of voting.
Now, let's learn a bit more about the champs, as well as the runners up ...
Babson Diagnostics is a health care-technology company focused on making routine blood testing less invasive, more convenient and more affordable for people. The company has developed a patented finger collection device that requires only one-tenth the sample volume of traditional venipuncture methods while maintaining accuracy and quality. It has secured key patents in the United States, European Union and China. It has raised about $44 million in venture funding, including a $31 million series B in 2021.
The company was named in honor of Art Babson, whose legacy of scientific innovation is the foundation on which the company is built.
Inno conducted an email interview with the champs to learn more.
Inno: Babson Diagnostics had a huge and impressive turnout this year. What strategies did the company use to activate its employees and external supporters?
Babson Diagnostics: First off, we are thrilled to be crowned the champions of this year’s Austin Inno Madness. Austin is home to so many innovative companies and to come out as the company most people would want to invest in means a lot. We would like to thank everyone who voted for Babson Diagnostics in every round.
When we found out that we were part of this year’s contest, we thought it would be a fun way to engage our employees and external partners. We reached out to our personal and professional networks, and simply asked for those who believe in us to take the time to vote. We are a pretty passionate group, and our partners, vendors, manufacturers, investors, friends and family really believe in what we’re doing at Babson — making blood testing more convenient, accessible, and less invasive. The response gives us even more energy as we head toward commercial launch.
Inno: How has Babson Diagnostics evolved over the past six months to a year?
Babson Diagnostics: As with any business preparing for commercial launch, there is so much progress happening quickly. We have spent the past year validating the science behind our innovative ecosystem and conducting clinical studies. We’ve had thousands of people in the community participate in our studies and give positive feedback.
We just started to move into our new headquarters space in Austin to accommodate our growing team.The site houses our high-efficiency, purpose built lab where we will be able to run upward of 50 million blood tests each year. We continue to make key hires across the company including customer service, marketing, operations and finance. In addition, we’ve been actively selecting locations for service depots across Texas as we build our transportation network.
Finally, we were very excited to unveil the brand for our service — BetterWay Blood Testing. This reflects how we have reimagined blood testing around its most important element — the customer.
Inno: What’s up next for the company in the year ahead?
Babson Diagnostics: The Babson team is working with retail partners to bring BetterWay Blood Testing to a pharmacy near you. More to come on that very soon! Our representatives will be busy visiting local medical practices to get clinicians set up to order BetterWay. And we also are working with payers and employers on securing coverage. We plan to launch our service in Texas in the second half of this year, conditional on regulatory clearance of the capillary blood collection device we’ve developed in partnership with BD.
Inno: How does Babson plan to celebrate its victory?
Babson Diagnostics: Are there any nets we can cut down? Just kidding. At Babson, we make celebrating a priority. In fact, we plan to celebrate the official opening of our new lab and headquarters. We will definitely find a special way to recognize this accomplishment with employees and friends and then get back to work and show that those votes mean something.
Join Inno in congratulating Babson Diagnostics on their big Inno Madness win. We also touched base with runners up Grazzy, which has developed a payments platform for hospitality businesses. Here's what they've got in the works:
Inno: Grazzy had a huge and impressive turnout this year. What strategies did the company use to activate its employees and external supporters?
Grazzy: Our team, our customers, our investors, our former colleagues, our community — they all came out for us BIG time. Round after round, it became a little bit of a Cinderella story and we were doing all we could to ignite our networks. Our platform is built on gratitude, but we honestly were overwhelmed by how passionate people were about supporting us. I also think that people can really get behind our mission. We're solving a real problem for people that have been left behind in an increasingly cashless world. We create a virtuous circle between guest, employee, business — and our story is relatable — I think most voters have been in the shoes of one of those stakeholders.
Inno: How has Grazzy evolved over the past six months?
Grazzy: It's been quite a ride, but so incredibly exciting. We raised our seed round in late 2022 and we've grown 10X in terms of customers since then. In the hotel space, we're working with some of the largest brands and operating groups in the world to enable digital tipping and instant access to daily wages and tips.
Beyond hotels, we've expanded into salons and spas, car washes, bars and restaurants to help their staff both make more money (salon and car wash tips are UP since we launched) and access it instantly (it's amazing to be able to deliver credit card tips to bartenders and servers the same day) while making sure the non-sexy stuff like taxes and compliance are covered in real-time.
Inno: What’s up next for the company in the year ahead?
Grazzy: If the last year was any indication: big things! As we continue to grow our customer base, we're excited to expand our banking offerings to give users better ways to spend and save. So many of our customers' hourly workers are unbanked or underbanked and we see a real opportunity to serve them with more inclusive solutions. We're on pace to have thousands of customers under management, and each of them has 30 to hundreds of employees; so many good ideas come directly from those we serve. We're excited to grow and learn alongside our partners and customers.
What's next for Austin Inno? We're glad you asked. We'll be gathering nominations for this year's 25 Under 25 list, which features the most exciting and promising innovators in Austin who are age 25 or younger.
