Inno Madness is the Sacramento Business Journal's Inno section bracket-style competition to highlight the startup and technology companies that drive our innovation economy.
Ian Lawson / ACBJ
It's vote time for Sacramento's startup community in a bracket challenge competition.
Inno Madness is the Sacramento Business Journal's Inno section bracket-style competition to highlight the startup and technology companies that drive our innovation economy.
These 16 companies will go head-to-head through subsequent rounds of voting with you, our readers, determining who moves on from every matchup. At the end of all the matchups after the rounds of voting, we'll announce our Inno Madness winner. Along the way, local startups and tech companies will get a little ink to let the ecosystem know a bit about them.
There is no prize money, and there will be no pitches necessary. It's mostly just for fun and glory. And a little attention for the Sacramento region's startups. Here are the official rules.
Voting for the first round is open now. The first round will run through 9 a.m. on March 14.
Here's what you need to know about the contenders.
- Adload Technologies Inc. is a Sacramento company that is bringing roadside billboard advertising to the roadway with its digital screens for big rigs. It features a revenue-sharing model for the trucks’ owners. Adload does the work of selling, managing and producing the ads that appear on the backs of trucks all over the country.
- Advanced Farm Technologies Inc. is a Davis company that makes robotic fruit harvesters that automatically sense and pick ripe fruit. They use cameras of the company's own design to find the fruit. It uses color sensors to determine ripeness before picking the fruit with gentle robotic grippers.
- Azra Games is a Sacramento gaming studio of veteran developers creating immersive science fiction fantasy role-playing games, which feature game characters that players can own, collect and trade on blockchain technology.
- Bekonix Inc. is a Sacramento company developing a no-code platform to help people build smart hardware and software for internet-connected devices. It lets users drag and drop access to controllers, inputs, outputs and sound players without any coding.
- Buzly is a Sacramento company whose social app allows college students to find information about their school and about other students, school events, clubs and social events. Colleges pay for access to the service, which, in turn, allows the school to reach out to students in a centralized forum.
- California Cultured is a West Sacramento company developing lab-generated chocolate and coffee made from cell cultures of those plants. It seeks to produce sustainable chocolate and coffee compounds free from deforestation and child labor in the chocolate and coffee industries.
- EyeRate Inc. is an Elk Grove company that develops reputation management software that pays retail employees for good customer reviews. The company was founded to get front-line employees more money by rewarding them for good service.
- GameMic Inc. is an El Dorado Hills company that developed an app that lets anyone produce live audio broadcasts at school sporting events using their smartphone. The free GameMic app lets people interested in youth sports broadcast live audio of games online.
- Grin is a Sacramento company that built a platform that manages the logistics, record keeping, analytics and payment for influencer marketing, which is online social-media marketing and endorsements. The company provides systems to manage that kind of advertising for their direct-to-consumer clients and also for influencers.
- Hamama is a West Sacramento company that makes kits for people to grow microgreens in their own home. The company supplies its customers with seed quilts, which are seeds locked into a growing medium. The seeds are grown in trays, and they don’t have to be watered after the initial soaking.
- Japa Inc. is a Woodland company that has developed parking intelligence hardware and software coupled with an app that allows users to find vacant parking spaces more efficiently. Japa's sensors can be deployed on a large scale to show open spaces, and they can be used in limited quantities to count cars entering and exiting a garage.
- Matrubials Inc. is a Davis company developing antibacterial therapies from milk products for use in health care. The company's products use milk antimicrobial peptides that are selective and kill harmful bacteria, leaving helpful bacteria intact.
- PairAnything Inc. is a Davis company whose app has the ability to pair food and wine. The app can help wineries and restaurants increase beverage sales.
- ReviverMX Inc. is a Granite Bay company that developed and legalized digital license plates for cars and trucks that automatically renew registration and also include geo-tracking and toll payment along with other features that include signaling if the car is stolen and allowing for some messages to appear on the screen.
- StyleForIt is a Sacramento company with an online consignment store for plus-size women's fashions. Users can buy and/or sell using the site. And the site can help with shipping and payment processing.
- uProfyt is a Sacramento company that supports nonprofits, companies and government entities with managing financial data and reporting. Once they have financial clarity, it supports them in finding and writing grant proposals. It also supports them with grant management compliance.
