After five rounds of voting with thousands of votes cast for an initial 32 companies across Wisconsin, we're now declaring a winner.
Thank you to all of the companies that participated in the competition and to everyone who voted. Learn about the 32 participating companies here and subscribe to Wisconsin Inno's twice-weekly newsletter to see profiles of some of them in the coming weeks.
Without further ado, the 2022 Wisconsin Inno Madness champion is...
Showboat. The Milwaukee-based 3D virtual events platform pulled out a win in the final round against canned beverage maker Carbliss. See the full bracket below.
As the concept of the metaverse gains steam, Showboat is positioning itself as a bridge technology between existing 2D virtual technologies like Microsoft Teams and Zoom, and the virtual reality (VR) metaverse that could be ubiquitous in the future.
"What Showboat offers is the metaverse now, the metaverse of 2022," Showboat CEO Nate Kresse said. "You can send a link to a group of people and all hop in an immersive environment and meet face-to-face, more like you can in real life."
The web-based platform doesn't require any extra hardware and enables users to navigate around a virtual events space and have natural, face-to-face interactions. Through the platform's use of spatial audio, a single virtual event can support multiple simultaneous side conversations because users only hear the voices of people within close virtual proximity.
While Showboat isn't currently built for VR, the underlying technology is VR-capable, Kresse said.
Co-founded in 2020 by Kresse, David Stamm and Scott Vanderbeck, Showboat was created by the Milwaukee experiential software company No Small Magic. Around late last year, the team retired No Small Magic and formed Showboat Live, the company that now operates the Showboat platform, Kresse said.
The startup has raised $1 million to date from investors including Johnny Vassallo, the real estate developer behind the proposed 28-story Drew Tower in Wauwatosa. It isn't actively seeking additional capital, Kresse said.
