The 2023 Minne Inno Madness bracket-style competition has come to an end, with one of the Twin Cities-based startups pulling ahead to become this year’s champion.
That winner is Minneapolis-based BettorEdge, a social sports-betting startup, which captured 51.2% of the nearly 1,700 total votes cast in the final round of voting. The runner-up was Trunkdrop, a St. Paul-based on-demand contactless delivery app.
This year’s Minne Inno Madness competition launched early last month, with 32 local startups vying for the coveted title of 2023 Inno Madness champion. The competition is Minne Inno’s friendly, bracket-style challenge where readers vote to advance companies based on one question: Who would you invest in?
The bracket is designed to highlight 32 innovative, fast-growing local businesses, from more established companies to early-stage startups.
This year’s champion has indeed grown fast and anticipates that stride to continue. In November, BettorEdge told Minne Inno that it was seeing a surge of interest for its sports-betting platform, which lets users set up their own wagers against each other.
In mid-2021, the company surpassed $3.5 million in orders, or proposed bets, but then, just months ago, it hit $50 million in orders. More recently, BettorEdge secured an investment from Sixteen Ventures, the investment firm launched by the former Minnesota Wild player Jason Zucker and his wife, Carly Zucker.
BettorEdge is working to curate its own niche in the growing market for gambling on sports. Instead of operating like a traditional sportsbook, the local company’s platform has no fees and allows bettors to go up against each other by choosing how much they’re willing to bet.
On the win, BettorEdge Co-founder Greg Kajewski told Minne Inno it was great to see people rallying behind the competition, which included “a lot of great Minnesota startups” and helped drive “buzz” for the BettorEdge platform.
To learn about all of the companies that participated in 2023 Minne Inno Madness, click here.
You can read the rules from the contest here.
Here is the updated bracket:
