It may not be March, but a different form of madness has kicked off in Florida.
Pitch Madness, which pits entrepreneurs against one another in bracket rounds, kicked off its first Orlando event at Synapse Orlando on Friday.
"Instead of founders having a two to six minute spiel, we create a tournament bracket of founders," Pitch Madness founder Tyler Kelly said. "And they go head-to-head and debate on the best practices, and growing a business. Sometimes it's market specific, sometimes founder specific. It resonated really well in Tampa and we decided to scale it."
Pitch Madness unveiled at the Tampa Synapse Summit earlier in 2019, and, after positive reaction, Kelly decided to scale it. Orlando will be the first stop, with its winner getting an automatic entry to Synapse Summit 2020's Pitch Madness.
The next step is Miami, as part of the city's Global Entrepreneurship Week. The same rule will follow, where the winner gets an automatic in to Tampa's summit in February 2020.
"We noticed when it's not a rehearsed canned speech, it's a really unique opportunity for investors and judges to see the founders through a different lens," Kelly said. "It helps them see the psychology of the founder and learn about their trials and tribulations."
Orlando's Tech Madness kicked off Synapse Orlando on Oct. 18, which took six founders across three industries: healthcare, enterprise/SaaS and gaming.
Each of the industries had two founders go head-to-head on questions from Kelly, who donned a referee uniform for the occasion. The final three took the stage together in front of a stacked set of judges, including representatives from Florida Funders, Deepwork Capital, Revolution Rise of the Rest seedfund and Seedfunders Orlando.
Justin Mitchell of YAC, or Yelling Across Cubicles, Tony Ruben from Blue Halo Biomedical, and Sean Pinnock of CyberDream took the top three spots, with Ruben ultimately winning the competition. Among his prizes were a $5,000 equity investment prize funded by SeedFunderOrlando, a possible $25,000 equity investment option funded by DeepWork Capital and $1,500 cash.
Reben ultimately grabbed the gold for continuing to pivot the questions back to his business, which is a smaller, safer catheter that aims to reduce the 13,000 catheter-induced deaths each year.
"This was a tough one, they were all really good answers," David Barkoe, co-founder of Miami-based Carve Communications. "My vote is for Tony. Throughout the three rounds, all the answers were focused on his company, what's best for him, versus a broader picture."
