The bracket is built, the teams are in place and it’s time to kick off a new edition of Colorado Inno’s Tech Madness competition.
Across the Inno network, Tech Madness is our annual bracket challenge designed to generate awareness and excitement for the state's ecosystem, and those that are driving it forward.
We assembled the bracket below of 32 fast-growing, tech-enabled Colorado businesses, based on your nominations. We seeded the “teams” based on a variety of factors, including funding raised, number of employees and insights from our editorial staff.
Voting for each match will be open to the community, with readers answering just one question: Who would you invest in?
Last year, HeartHero topped CirrusMD to emerge as the 2020 Colorado Inno Tech Madness Champion in a heated final matchup. In total, 12,575 votes were cast in the 2020 competition, far surpassing 2019’s total vote count of 3,200.
This challenge is designed to generate awareness and excitement for the state’s innovation ecosystem and the companies that make it special, all through a little friendly competition.
Voting for the first round of 2021 is open through the weekend and we’ll announce the following matchups on March 15. Each IP address gets one vote per day.
Here’s the full schedule:
- Round 1 voting March 9-14
- Round 2 voting March 15-18
- Round 3 voting March 19-22
- Round 4 voting March 23-25
- Round 5 voting March 26-29. We’ll announce the champion on March 30.
Round 4
The final matchup is set and two Denver technology companies will face off for Tech Madness glory.
After rolling through the competition as the top vote-getter in each round, Pie Insurance will take on fourth-seeded StackHawk for the 2021 Tech Madness championship.
Both companies eased through their last matchups, as the competition has received more than 5,600 votes so far.
Get voting below!
Round 3
Another round down and we only have four companies remaining in our Tech Madness bracket challenge.
No. 2 seed Pie Insurance continues its dominant run, once again receiving the most votes in the previous round. The company will take on underdog Sheets & Giggles, a No. 7 seed that has knocked off three higher-seeded companies on its route to the last four.
In our closest round-three race, No. 5 seed Shinesty narrowly upset No. 3 seed Harvest Hosts, winning by only 19 votes. On its side of the bracket, Shinesty will take on StackHawk for a spot in the finals.
Round 2
After more than 4,300 votes and another set of exciting matchups between Colorado tech companies, we're moving on to round three of Tech Madness.
No. 2 seed Pie Insurance had the most votes this round after knocking off Denver's Plume, and moves on to face top-seeded Quantum Metric.
Quantum Metric reached this point after a tight victory over local startup Zestful, winning by only five votes. In our tightest matchup, top-seeded DispatchHealth was taken down by newcomer Harvest Hosts by one single vote!
As for underdogs, Denver bedding startup Sheets & Giggles advances as a No. 7 seed to take on Guild Education. The competition's reigning champion HeartHero bowed out after losing to Guild Education, meaning we'll have a new winner this time around!
Check out the bracket and vote below.
Round 1
The votes have been counted and round one is officially over! In total, we had more than 2,700 votes in the first round and 16 companies are moving on.
While all the top seeds are still alive, upsets abound in the first round of voting. Seventh-seeded Sheets & Giggles knocked off No. 2 seed Pax9 in a very tight matchup, while sixth-seeded Zestful and HeartHero both completed upsets.
In round two we have exciting matchups including Quantum Metric vs. Zestful, Ibotta vs. SonderMind and JumpCloud vs. StackHawk.
Check out the remaining companies that competing in Colorado Inno’s 2021 Tech Madness competition:
One vote per person per day; read contest rules here.
