Final Results: After a total of 7,154 votes from readers across the state, a champion has emerged in Wisconsin Inno's Tech Madness tournament.
LUM, a Madison tech startup that provides a music streaming app for independent artists, edged out Pivotal Health by 10 votes, despite Pivotal Health, a Madison company developing a mobile app platform for clinician house calls, being the top vote-getter in every round leading up to the final.
The final was a matchup of two underdogs — Pivotal Health was a No. 8 seed and LUM was a No. 5 seed.
We thank everyone who voted in this year's Tech Madness tournament.
Tech Madness is our annual bracket-style competition to highlight the action and activity that has come to define Wisconsin's innovation economy.
The playbook
With your help, we identified 32 private, bootstrapped and venture-backed tech companies poised to make moves this year and beyond, putting them in contention for the 2021 title. We seeded them based on factors including funding raised, size, stage, headcount and other growth metrics, and created the matchups accordingly.
The game plan
We asked voters to consider the following: Who would you invest in? Think about the enterprises you’d back — for the fastest return, the safest bet or the long game. Pick the models you think will succeed, or the missions you want to see succeed. Vote for your own company, the ones you’ve rooted for from afar, or the ones you’re just now discovering (more on all of them below). It’s up to you. And keep in mind: A vote for one company is not a vote against another; rather, the challenge aims to build awareness and excitement for the region’s tech universe and the companies that make it what it is, through a little healthy — and friendly — competition.
After 25 days of voting, Madison-based Curate won Wisconsin Inno’s 2020 Tech Madness competition.
The rulebook
Voting for the first round of 2021 was open through this past weekend. Each IP address got one vote per day. Continue to watch for news on this year's competitors in our twice-weekly newsletter, The Beat.
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
Meet the competitors:
Region 1
Seed #1: SHINE Medical Technologies
Seed #2: FluGen
Seed #3: EnsoData
Seed #4: Moxe Health
Seed #5: Data Chat
Seed #6: Marathon Machines
Seed #7: Quiver Quantitative
Seed #8: PRODx
Region 2
Seed #1: Fetch Rewards
Seed #2: Ionic
Seed #3: Rentable
Seed #4: GenoPalate
Seed #5: LUM
Seed #6: Xylome
Seed #7: Blue Line Battery
Seed #8: Summary Medical
Region 3
Seed #1: Redox
Seed #2: Bright Cellars
Seed #3: Vasugen
Seed #4: Allergy Amulet
Seed #5: DotCom Therapy
Seed #6: Fiveable
Seed #7: Agricycle
Seed #8: Pivotal Health
Region 4
Seed #1: Understory
Seed #2: FrontDesk
Seed #3: GrocerKey
Seed #4: Synthetaic
Seed #5: Sift Healthcare
Seed #6: Medical Engineering Innovations (MEI)
Seed #7: Socialeads
Seed #8: Octane Coffee
Read contest rules here
