Venture Madness, one of Arizona's best-known and longest-running pitch competitions and conferences that supports entrepreneurs and startups, has shifted the dates for its 2021 event due to the effects of the coronavirus.
Typically, the event is held in February, but next year's event has been set for Oct. 6-7, at a Phoenix-area venue to be determined.
The annual event that focuses on emerging growth companies is organized by Invest Southwest, a Phoenix-based nonprofit committed to the region’s startup community with the support of its main partner, the Arizona Commerce Authority, along with other sponsorship support from angel investors, venture capital firms and other investment firms. Established in 1992 as a way to attract startup capital into the state, Venture Madness shifted to its current format with a pitch competition in 2014.
Karen Katzorke, executive director for Invest Southwest, said the event board met over the summer and made the decision to delay Venture Madness until October.
Diana Vowels, this year's event chair, said the event could be staged using both a live and an online format, but that will depend on what is happening with Covid-19.
"Our intention is to have a live component for the event as long as we feel it's safe to do it if the conditions warrant it. Pushing it to October was a responsible business decision," said Vowels, a Phoenix-area tech consultant who had worked as vice president of community for coworking company Galvanize in Phoenix until July of this year. "We are super excited because the caliber of entries every year has been improving drastically since 2016."
The pitch competition typically includes anywhere from 16 to 34 startups, with four winners selected. The 2020 Venture Madness competition held in February, a month before the pandemic took hold, attracted 230 attendees at the Tempe Center for the Arts.
Each winning company took home $15,000, including three from the Phoenix area and one from New Mexico.
While Venture Madness has typically focused on startups in the Southwest, Katzorke said a big change in the event for 2021 is that it will be opened up to emerging companies from around the country as it evolves into a national competition. Typically about half of the startups taking part are from Arizona.
The event normally divides the competitors into four categories: consumer, technology, medical and software-as-a-service. Katzorke said they are considering adding a "growth" category for 2021 to cover startups that are more mature and are seeking series A funding.
Katzorke said that while the pitch competition is the high-profile component of the event, it's the networking between startup execs and investment firms that attend Venture Madness that is equally important.
Typically the event brings in between $250,000 and $300,000 in sponsorship dollars, with the ACA being the premier sponsor. Now that the date for the 2021 event has been finalized, Katzorke said organizers will now begin to call on sponsors — usually including investment firms or regional economic development organizations — to shore up support.
One of the well-known graduates of the Venture Madness competition is Chandler-based educational tech firm CampusLogic, which took part in the 2015 pitch event. In July, the company received a $120 million private equity funding injection from San Francisco-based Dragoneer Investment Group.
