Last night, the Wisconsin tech community gathered together at South Second in Milwaukee to celebrate Wisconsin Inno’s 2019 50 on Fire, a list of people and companies that are working to move Wisconsin tech forward.
50 on Fire is an annual celebration of startups, enterprises and individuals that have had a banner year—whether that’s fast growth, new product launches, big hires or innovative approaches to solving problems. You can see the full list of winners here.
At the event, we also unveiled this year’s seven Inno Blazer winners, which were the top people and companies from the list as decided by a group of judges. The Blazer winners all received Inno’s iconic red blazer at the event.
This year’s Inno Blazers were:
Abby Taubner, Gener8tor: Taubner is a partner at Wisconsin-based startup accelerator gener8tor. She helped co-found gener8tor’s gBETA program, a free program for early stage companies. She initially joined gener8tor as an intern after graduating from UW-Madison in 2014, working her way up from program manager, managing director, and ultimately to partner in January.
Amanda DoAmaral, CEO and founder of Fiveable: DoAmaral is the founder and chief executive officer of Fiveable, a platform where teachers can broadcast live test-prep sessions for AP-level classes. The startup, which participated in gener8tor’s 2019 Madison cohort, received a $10,000 investment from Camping World CEO Marcus Lemonis at a pitch competition earlier this year and announced it was relocating to Milwaukee. The startup has hosted hundreds of livestreams and connected tens of thousands of students and teachers.
Craig Dickman, Managing Director, TitletownTech: Dickman heads up TitletownTech, an initiative to spur startup growth and innovation in Green Bay that officially launched this year. TitletownTech is a plan kickstarted by Microsoft and the Green Bay Packers to launch an innovation lab, venture studio and $25 million VC fund in Green Bay. TitletownTech’s first fund is expected to invest in 18 startups, writing checks between $100,000 and $1 million.
Direct Supply: Founded in 1985, Direct Supply is distributor of equipment and services to the senior care industry. At roughly 1,200 employees, it’s one of the Milwaukee area’s largest employers. Direct Supply creates both software and hardware products to help seniors, and it recently unveiled a $9 million renovation of its Innovation and Technology Center on the campus of the Milwaukee School of Engineering.
Fetch Rewards: Founded in 2013, the Madison-based startup has created a mobile shopping platform that gives users rewards when buying groceries. Fetch Rewards recently raised $25 million from investors such as Greycroft and eVentures, and plans to use the financing to double its workforce by the end of 2020.
Redox: Founded in 2014, Madison-based Redox has built a platform that allows healthcare organizations to exchange patient data with each other. Earlier this year, the startup closed a $33 million Series C funding round and has been making strategic hires since. Over the summer, it added two new people to its executive team. Elif Eracar joined as the company’s chief customer officer and Ben Waugh joined as chief security officer.
Understory: Understory has become one of Wisconsin’s most high-profile startups. The company makes solar-powered weather stations that collect weather data to help a range of industries detect risk and make better business decisions. It raised $5 million in new funding this year to bring its total raised to date to $22 million. Its backers include Revolution’s Rise of the Rest fund, a VC fund led by AOL co-founder Steve Case.
