Welcome to the semifinal round of the Wisconsin Inno Madness competition! Based on your votes in Round 3, we're down to four semifinalists vying for the coveted title of 2022 Inno Madness champion.
The final two matchups feature companies from Milwaukee, Madison and Sheboygan County, representing various regions of Wisconsin's startup ecosystem.
Plymouth-based canned vodka beverage maker Carbliss (#11) was a crowd favorite last week, bringing in the most votes among all companies that remained in the competition and beating Milwaukee-based library rental platform Helium Books by a 21-percentage-point margin with nearly 61% of the vote.
Milwaukee's 3D virtual events platform Showboat (#9) enters the semifinal round after beating Milwaukee's eco-friendly toilet paper company Honeycomb Luxury (#32) last week by a nearly 14-percentage-point margin to capture 57% of the vote.
Medical technology startup Child Health Imprints (#5) and insurance tech firm Understory (#2), both of Madison, also advanced to this week's semifinals.
See the full results of Round 3 below and here.
Semifinal voting begins now and continues through tomorrow, March 23, at 11:59 pm. See below for the schedule for the rest of the competition. The final winner will be announced the week of March 28.
- March 24: Final-round voting opens in the morning
- March 25: Final-round voting ends at 11:59 p.m.
Let's get into the semifinals:
Meet the players
The bracket was designed to highlight innovative, fast-growing local businesses. We assembled it based on reader nominations and editorial input from the Wisconsin Inno team. Meet the participants below and read the contest rules here.
Vote for the company you'd most like to invest in, whether that's because you believe in its mission or product, you'd prefer to back a more established company versus an early-stage startup, or for any other reason entirely up to you.
Matchup 1
- Showboat (#9): Showboat is a web-based 3D virtual events platform designed to host natural and effective virtual conferences, networking events, sales meetings, fundraisers and town hall meetings that allow participants to interact face-to-face in a virtual space. It has raised $1 million, according to the Milwaukee company.
- Child Health Imprints (#5): This company has developed informational and computational technologies for neonatal intensive care units across the world, designed to improve outcomes for pre-term births. Founded in Singapore in 2018, it established its U.S. branch in Madison in 2021 and has raised $3 million to date, according to the company.
Matchup 2
- Understory (#2): Based in Madison, Understory builds insurance solutions for the era of climate change. Each policyholder gets a Dot, Understory's weather sensor that enables the company to accurately price its severe weather risk products. The company has raised $24.5 million since it was founded in 2012, according to the company's website.
- Carbliss (#11): This Wisconsin-based beverage company was founded in 2018 by a husband and wife team. It makes vodka-based canned cocktails that have zero carbs and sugar, and are available at bars and grocery stores around the Milwaukee area. The company said it has raised around $750,000.
Disclaimers
Vote here or below.
The goal of Inno Madness is to give a snapshot of some of the most promising tech companies in Wisconsin. It is by no means a complete list of Wisconsin's best startups. It's also not just a list of the 32 most-funded startups in the region. See all 32 startups here.
Instead, the bracket is meant to represent the full breadth and diversity of the ecosystem. In the end, think of the bracket as just a fun look into local tech companies you need to know in 2022.
Read contest rules here.
