St. Louis Inno Madness is getting closer to naming its inaugural winner.
After the third round of voting, just four companies remain in our friendly, bracket-style challenge.
Nearly 3,000 voters participated in the third round of Inno Madness. As with previous rounds, several matchups came down to the wire. Three of the four third-round matchups were decided by only 2 percentage points. The third round also continued to highlight the strength of the underdogs in this year’s contest. Of the four matchups, the lower seed prevailed in three of them. As a reminder, seeding in the bracket was determined based on the amount of funding raised by each company and name recognition of the businesses nominated.
Combined, the first three rounds of St. Louis Inno Madness have produced more than 7,400 votes. That engagement highlights the goal of Inno Madness, which is to give a snapshot of some of the most-promising tech companies in St. Louis. This contest is by no means a complete list of St. Louis' best startups, which is a testament to the size of St. Louis' tech scene. The bracket is meant to represent the full breadth and diversity of the ecosystem. In the end, look at the bracket as a fun look into local, technology-enabled companies you need to know in 2022.
Fourth round voting in St. Louis Inno Madness begins now and continues through 5 p.m., Monday, March 28. In this competition, we're asking voters to advance companies based on one question: Who would you invest in? Whether you believe in one mission or product slightly over the other or would prefer to back a more established company versus an early-stage startup, how you answer that question is entirely up to you. Meet the round 4 participants below and read the contest rules here. Readers can cast one vote per round.
Before we unveil the fourth-round bracket, we’d like to provide a tip of the cap to the companies that won’t be advancing to the next round. Thank you for your participation and for adopting the spirit of Inno Madness through your friendly competition and efforts to get out the vote for your companies. We hope to see you again in the bracket next year and encourage you to vote for your fellow local startups throughout the rest of this year's contest.
MEET THE PLAYERS
Matchup 1
#10 Advocado: Founded in 2017, Advocado has developed a cross-media data management technology platform used by brands, media companies and advertising agencies and designed to boost advertising performance. It recently raised $10 million and made a pair of acquisitions.
#30 Biz Video School: The company has developed an online school for real estate agents and the real estate workforce to help them use video in their communication and marketing efforts.
Matchup 2
#25 Phas3 Health: It has developed a mobile and web application that facilitates remote cardiac rehabilitation. The startup developed out of research the two co-founders did together at Saint Louis University on smartphone-based medical devices. It won an Arch Grant in 2019.
#28 Speak Information Technologies: The startup, led by a group of students from Washington University, is a clinical documentation software company aimed at helping health care providers streamline data entry and administrative tasks. It has raised $22,000 in nondilutive funding from competitions.
Read contest rules here.
