Thirty-two teams. Five rounds of voting. And one ultimate champion.
Meet this year’s Cincy Inno Madness winner: Nichefire.
The Covington startup takes the title in our nearly month-long bracket-style competition after skirting by Band Connect head-to-head in the finals by a mere 71 votes.
In total, more than 1,600 ballots were cast in the finals, bringing the total tally in the contest to nearly 5,000.
Nichefire is building an artificial intelligence-powered platform to help companies – such as Walmart – understand and predict the impact of emerging cultural trends. The company last year raised an undisclosed pre-seed round with participation from Indianapolis- and Cincinnati-based Allos Ventures; Keyhorse Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in Kentucky companies; and Bluegrass Angels, a Lexington-based angel investing group.
Readers voted to advance companies based on one question: Who would you invest in? Nichefire joins past Inno Madness winners – Akru, TinnCann, Sense Neuro Diagnostics and Navistone – and earns the prize of bragging rights for an entire year.
The goal of Inno Madness is to offer a glimpse of some of the companies working in the innovation space in the region.
