'Tis the season: Madness is upon us, and we wanted to marry our love of competition and local tech and startups to celebrate.
Enter Tech Madness, a reader-driven bracket competition a la March Madness. It aims to champion and highlight local startups — 32 of them, to be exact, and they'll "play" against each other over the next few weeks until we determine a winner. See the whole bracket here.
We chose and seeded the companies depending on a handful of metrics, but ultimately relied on venture funding to dictate who went where. After all, funding is among the most universal benchmarks out there. Know that all companies on the list are either private, venture-backed or recently-exited entities.
How each company performs is up to you, readers. You'll vote weekly after asking yourself, "who would I invest in?" This answer is, by design, subjective. It could be based on who you think will generate the greatest return, or who's mission is most aligned with your values and interests or who you're simply rooting for. However you interpret that question is correct! Just remember, Tech Madness is about voting for one company and not against another. But it's a competition and someone has to move on.
That startup will ultimately win a top-secret prize which will be announced in due time. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, the first round ends Thursday, March 22 at 11:59 p.m. Send those votes in, and encourage others to get in on the action too.
Now get to it and start filling out the first round below.
