Meet Richmond Inno's 2019 Inno Blazers

By Kieran McQuilkin

August 05, 2020, 01:05pm EDT

Members of Richmond’s tech, business and startup communities converged in Scott's Addition Thursday night to celebrate Richmond Inno’s Inno on Fire, a party honoring 25 of the most innovative companies and individuals in Central Virginia.

Hundreds of the area's top entrepreneurs and innovators appeared at the packed event for networking and a celebration of the River City's best and brightest. In addition to honoring our 25, we also announced the category-winning Inno Blazers in our community.

This year’s Inno on Fire kicked off a few months back when we asked for nominations from the community. The Richmond community followed through, and we received nearly 100 suggestions for who was the most “on fire” in the ecosystem.

The Richmond Inno staff then selected two dozen companies and individuals that are making major moves in the community, looking at growth, impact, new launches, market expansion, funding and more.

If you’ve seen the list of this year’s Inno on Fire winners, you probably noticed that there isn’t a neat, unifying thread that ties them all together. It’s eclectic, just like the Richmond startup community. We thought the best way to honor them was to get them together in a room so everyone could see how they’re lighting their little part of the ecosystem on fire.

After choosing our winners, we reached out to members of the startup community to help us rank the top choice in each of our seven categories. This year’s panel included Shannon Siriano Greenwood, Founder of Rebelle, Garrett Westlake, Executive Director of the VCU Da Vinci Center, Scott Ukrop, Director of Business Development at NRV and select representatives from BDO.

We tallied up all their votes to choose our category-winning Inno Blazers. Each of these winners was awarded – you guessed it – a bright red blazer. Check out pictures of them blow.

Let’s get to the list of winners.