Our Seattle Inno Madness competition is here, and four local companies remain to compete for the coveted title of 2024 Seattle Inno Madness champion.
In the second round, 16th-seeded Blueprint continued its run and beat Zensa, a nine seed. Blueprint will face No. 12 Oleria, which defeated 13th-seeded WellSaid Labs.
On the other side of the bracket, Parse Biosciences, a seven seed, upset TerraPower, a two seed. Parse Biosciences will face 11th-seeded Stack Moxie, which defeated Swiftly, a three seed.
Second-round voting begins now and continues through Friday, April 19, at noon. Readers can cast one vote per round. We'll open up voting round by round, ultimately crowning an Inno Madness winner later this month.
What is Inno Madness?
Inno Madness is our friendly, bracket-style challenge where readers vote to advance companies based on one question: Whom would you invest in?
How you answer that question — whether you believe in one mission or product over the other or would prefer to back a more established company versus an early-stage startup — is entirely up to you. The bracket is designed to shine a spotlight on 16 innovative, fast-growing local businesses.
The bracket is assembled based on reader nominations, as well as editorial input from the Seattle Inno team. Seeding was determined by factors like funding, mission, business focus and company size. Meet the participants below and read the contest rules here.
The goal of Inno Madness is to give a snapshot of some of the most promising tech companies in the Seattle area. The bracket is meant to represent the full breadth and diversity of the ecosystem. In the end, think of the bracket as a fun look into local tech companies you need to know in 2024. You can see a longer list of startups to keep tabs on here.
Let's get into round 3...
Meet the remaining companies
Parse Biosciences: Startup that offers single-cell sequencing technology to allow researchers to better understand the biology of an individual cell
Stack Moxie: Marketing tech company that helps clients find outages and bugs before they become major problems
Oleria: Cybersecurity company that makes security clearances within organizations more dynamic
Blueprint: Data intelligence company that helps clients make supply chain and customer decisions in real time
Meet the other companies that competed
Icertis: Contract management company that helps clients manage contracts with employees, customers and suppliers
TerraPower: Nuclear power company co-founded by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates that is working on a thermal energy storage demonstration project
Swiftly: Startup that helps grocers and other retailers offer loyalty programs, digital coupons and mobile checkout
ProfoundBio: Biotech company developing a treatment aimed at ovarian and endometrial cancer
Umoja Biopharma: Company developing immunotherapies to help patients fight cancer with the body's natural defenses
Rhythms: Work software company designed to help teams handle their work cadences
Opala: Health care data company focused on making data more accessible for providers and payers
Zensa: Tech consulting firm that helps its clients with cloud services
Electric Era: Electric vehicle charging startup that makes EV charging stations for use at gas stations, convenience stores and other retailers
WellSaid Labs: Voice-technology startup that allows clients to convert text to speech in one click
Interlune: Space resources startup that aims to extract helium-3 from the moon and bring it back to Earth
Cimba.ai: Artificial intelligence startup that helps clients make better use of company data
