Venture Madness, Arizona’s longest running pitch contest for entrepreneurs, has long held a special place on the calendar of Arizona’s tech community, but this year the event will have a national reach.
For the first time since its inception in 1992, Venture Madness is accepting applications from entrepreneurs across the country and not just in the Southwest region. Applications are due on June 3, ahead of the event which is scheduled for Oct. 6 and 7.
Diana Vowels, chair of this year’s Venture Madness event, said that opening to national applicants will improve the contest and hopefully attract attention from out-of-state investors as well. Vowels is also a board member at Invest Southwest, the nonprofit organization that runs Venture Madness.
“Frankly, businesses, companies compete with companies globally now,” Vowels said. “We see it as a way to make a stronger, better competition and display what Arizona has to offer.”
Previous Venture Madness winners include CampusLogic, an edtech startup that went on to raise a $120 million round last summer, Phoenix-based FullBay and Utah-based Homie.
The event typically takes place in the spring — it was originally held around the March Madness basketball tournament — but the event was pushed back to October this year because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Vowels told the Business Journal that the plan is to hold the Oct. 7 pitch event at the Phoenix Biomedical Campus this year, specifically in the University of Arizona facility, pending contract finalization. There is also a planned Oct. 6 reception to be held at the new Wexford Science + Technology building on the campus.
Vowels said they’ve already received 70 applications, which is more than they got for the last contest in February 2020, and she said they expect more since they usually see a rush of applications come in at the last minute.
Week of events
Venture Madness will be bookended by two other events happening that week in October: Arizona Bioscience Week will start the week off, followed by the Venture Madness pitch contest on Oct. 7 and the Unmet Conference for connecting startups to investors on Friday, Oct. 8.
Vowels said that the leaders of the three events, along with the Arizona Commerce Authority, thought the events were complementary and it would give those traveling into town a reason to stay an extra day or two.
“We decided that it was in the best interest of Arizona, in showcasing innovation, for us to all work together and make a really solid week that week,” she said.
Live and in person
The volume and type of applicants that the selection committee receives will shape the pitching categories and ultimately the size of prize money, which is typically between $10,000 and $15,000 for the winner in each category. There are generally between 24 and 36 finalists which present during the event in four to six categories.
Karen Katzorke, executive director for Invest Southwest, said that besides the prize money applicants find value in the exposure they get during Venture Madness and from working with coaches who help them refine their pitches in the months leading up to the event itself.
Generally, tech companies had the ability to shift to remote work during the pandemic, but Vowels said that despite the ability to go remote, the tech community in Phoenix is very social and there’s been a lack of in person events recently.
“It's easier to have the ability to work remotely because of technology, they're also a very social group. They like to get together, it's a whole tribe,” Vowels said. “They network and they have events and I know a lot of the folks in the startup community are really missing that camaraderie that they get from that.”
The application deadline is 3 p.m. (MST) on June 3. Click here for more information on the event or the application process.
