After a month of voting and tens of thousands of votes cast, the DC Tech community has picked a 2016 Tech Madness Champion...
Congratulations to the unlikely 16-seed, a true Cinderella story that scored some major upsets on their way to the title. Stay tuned for a look at the fast-growing company, which partners with local restaurants to find you new places to eat and save you money at the same time. Thanks to everyone who voted and again to our sponsors of our Bracket Reveal event.
As a reminder, Tech Madness is DC Inno's annual March competition to generate awareness and excitement for the city's tech ecosystem. The winners of each round were determined by community voting, with readers answering one question as they decide who to support: Which D.C. tech companies do you think will be the most valuable in five years?
Here's our coverage of all the bracket rounds.
VOTING SCHEDULE:
- Round 1: March 10 - March 15
- Round 2: March 16 - March 21
- Last Sixteen: March 22 - March 24
- Quarter Finals: March 25 - March 29
- Semi Finals: March 30 - April 4
- Championship: April 5 - April 7
- Champion announced: April 7
BRACKET BREAKDOWN:
- You get one vote per matchup (We're counting one Network ID per round).
- The Conferences are named for fictional TV presidents. There is no hidden meaning to which names are associated to which companies. It's just fun.
- These are not the "64 best tech companies" in D.C. The bracket is a snapshot of the 2016 tech ecosystem, complete with early-stage startups, public pillars, and representatives across different sectors in the city.
- These 64 companies were culled from the nominations and information that we received, as well as from internal research and reporting. There will be a number of companies not on this bracket that you believe deserve to be on here. And that's great; that's why this community's so strong. Let us know who you think we missed and we'll be sure to consider them for 2017.
- Seeding for private companies is based primarily on funding. Why? Because we needed an accessible, uniform metric so that these rankings weren’t completely arbitrary. We realize some companies have grown significantly without raising much funding, however, and so we seeded a few of them based on our knowledge of their size.
- For seeding the public companies, we used market capitalization.
- Finally, if you feel slighted, shafted or gypped for not making the final bracket, please don't take it personally, and do your best not to take it out on the DC Inno team. Instead, let's grab a beer sometime soon and talk about how we can work together to generate even more excitement for the D.C. ecosystem in the future. We always want to hear what you're up to.
