Here's what to expect at Venture Madness 2021, Arizona's largest pitch contest

Arizona’s biggest and longest running pitch contest for startups is set for Oct. 7 and this year’s event is shaping up to be one of the most anctipated yet.

Venture Madness gives startups from across the region a chance to connect, share ideas and insights, and meet potential investors as participating companies compete for cash prizes.

Venture Madness is put on by nonprofit Invest Southwest and this year’s event chair, Diana Vowels, said momentum is picking up for Valley companies.

“The biggest difference between this year and last year is the momentum that has built in Phoenix around the startup community,” she said. “It's getting better and better each year. And the out-of-town and out-of-state investors coming in now, kind of validates what's going on here.”

Record number of applicants

Twenty-two finalists will pitch their companies in five separate categories: Software as a Service (SaaS), Tech, Growth, Medical and Consumer. Invest Southwest fielded a near-record 120 applications this year and previously announced 25 finalists in August but three have since withdrawn from the contest. 

Winners in each of the five categories will win a $10,000 prize. The full list of participants is below.

A panel of judges will decide the winner in each category, but this year the audience will also have a say with the People’s Choice award. Karen Katzorke, executive director of Invest Southwest, said they decided to bring the People’s Choice award back this year and the winner will walk away with $2,500.

Previous Venture Madness winners include Phoenix-based FullBay, Utah-based Homie, Phoenix-based Televeda and Chandler’s CampusLogic, a company that raised $120 million in growth capital last summer. 

The conference will take place at the Phoenix Biomedical Campus in downtown Phoenix, and this year Venture Madness is bookended by two other events. Arizona Bioscience Week events start on Oct. 3 and run through Oct. 9, Venture Madness is on Oct. 7 and on Friday, Oct. 8, Denver-based Stout Street Capital is hosting the UNMET Conference, to connect startups with seed stage investors.  

Beyond the money

The prize money is great, but some of the most valuable aspects of Venture Madness are less tangible according to Katzorke.

“One of the key components of Venture Madness is the mentoring that the companies get,” Vowels said. “They are put through the mentorship process, which is two focused sessions with groups of investors and industry experts, business leaders, who are reviewing their presentations and giving them feedback.”

She said one major focus is helping companies streamline their message and communicate it effectively in five minutes. A well-crafted pitch is essential for any founder, and polishing these presentations is key to hooking both the judges and the audience at Venture Madness.

The other intangible and invaluable part of Venture Madness is connections, and this year there’s a decent chance participants and attendees will bump into an investor from outside of Arizona.

One such investor traveling to Arizona for the event is Jim Douglass, a partner at Fulcrum Equity Partners in Atlanta. Fulcrum primarily invests up and down the Eastern Seaboard, but Douglass said they’ve recently been paying more attention to Phoenix.

“It's kind of the perfect market for us and one we think we can have some impact in,” he said. “Phoenix is great, it's sizable enough, you’ve a good talent pool, great university systems around and then entrepreneurs that have had success.”

Fulcrum was the lead investor on Phoenix-based Virtuous Software’s $18 million series B raise, which was announced in July. Douglass said Fulcrum already has contacts in the Valley —  including CampusLogic founder Gregg Scoresby — but he’s looking forward to meeting more people next week.

If the allure of out-of-state investors, local founders and fruitful networking isn’t enough, consider this: I will be moderating the tech portion of the pitch contest this year and it would be great to meet you.

Click here for tickets and more information.

Here are the 22 companies presenting at Venture Madness this year:

Software as a Service (SaaS)

Tech

Growth

Medical

Consumer