March brackets can be brutal. Some anticipated first seeds can get flung out of brackets in the first round, and that's what happened in Inno Madness.
Some of the region's companies with the most success in getting venture funding didn't get past the first round of Inno Madness, including social media marketing management platform Grin, video game studio Azra Games Inc. and robotic fruit-picker company Advanced Farm Technologies Inc.
What kind of madness doesn't include video games and robots, right?
It turns out people vote for companies making lab-grown chocolate, started by college students or that pay retail workers extra money for good service.
The only top seed to move from the round of 16 into the eight-company bracket is the digital license plate company ReviverMX Inc.
Now it's time to vote again for the Sacramento region's startup community in the second round of our bracket challenge competition.
Inno Madness is the Sacramento Business Journal's Inno section's bracket-style competition to highlight the startups in our innovation economy.
These eight remaining companies will go head-to-head through subsequent rounds of voting with you, our readers, determining who moves on to the next round. Along the way, local startups get some notice to introduce them to more people.
There is no prize money, and there will be no pitches necessary. It's just for fun and glory. Here are the official rules.
Voting for the second round is open now. The second round will run through 9 a.m. on March 21.
Here's what you need to know about the contenders:
- Buzly developed a social app for college students to find information about their school and about other students, school events, clubs and social events.
- California Cultured is developing lab-generated chocolate and coffee made from cell cultures of those plants.
- EyeRate developed reputation management software to pay retail employees for good customer reviews.
- GameMic Inc. developed a free app that lets anyone produce live audio broadcasts at school sporting events using their smartphone.
- Hamama makes kits for people to grow microgreens in their own home.
- Japa Inc. makes parking intelligence hardware and software coupled with an app that allows users to find vacant parking spaces more efficiently.
- Matrubials Inc. is developing antibacterial therapies from milk products for use in health care.
- ReviverMX sells digital license plates for cars and trucks that automatically renew registration and other features that include signaling if the car is stolen.
