Inno Madness Brings Healthy Dose of Competition to KC’s Startup Scene
A healthy dose of competition never hurts — especially in a startup ecosystem as supportive as Kansas City’s.
Round 1 of KC Inno’s first Inno Madness, bracket-style competition kicked off earlier this week with thirty-two Kansas City startups.
The competition seeks to introduce readers to some of Kansas City’s most innovative companies and drive excitement for the broader entrepreneurship ecosystem.
Inno Madness creatively demonstrates just how innovative of a city we live in! From key players like TripleBlind to high-growth potential companies like Veeper — you now have a chance to answer “Whom would you invest in?”
You can learn more about each of the 32 companies here and cast your vote for round 1 before Sunday, March 6 here.
Here’s the full list of Inno Madness contenders:
- ApolloTech: An insurtech company that offers online enrollment solutions to insurance agents and consumers.
- Artio Medical: Delivers innovative medical devices with the potential to provide impactful solutions to important unmet medical needs in the peripheral vascular, neurovascular and structural heart markets.
- Azella Advisor: Serves hybrid, independent and breakaway financial advisers and focuses on understanding their needs, goals and target audience to create effective marketing and high-quality leads.
- Bodify: An app that helps online apparel shoppers find the right fit the first time.
- CryptoSlam: A leading aggregator of nonfungible token (NFT) data from a growing list of popular blockchains.
- Daupler: Built incident response management software for cities, utilities and other service providers.
- EAR Micro: Designs smart micro-hearables that are half the size of others on the market.
- Epigraph: A visualization technology startup that can create photorealistic images and augmented reality experiences without a physical product.
- Finotta: Arms community banks and credit unions with a coveted tool — the ability to revamp their mobile app with personalized customer experiences.
- First Boulevard: A neobank that’s open to all but is focused on building solutions tailored for the Black community that can break down the barriers of financial disparity and help them build generational wealth.
- Fit Truk: Created a fully equipped mobile gym that’s attached to a truck and includes features such as a weather-proof sound system and app-controlled LED lights to set the mood.
- Fresh Factory KC: A premier selfie studio and event space located in Zona Rosa.
- Hawaiian Bros: A fast-casual and fast-growing eatery known for serving island-inspired comfort food without the use of microwaves, fryers or freezers.
- Homebase: A hubless solution for smart multitenant buildings.
- HomeRoom: A residential real estate marketplace that brings investors, tenants and homeowners together in a Silicon Valley-inspired online and mobile platform.
- Kenzen: A physiological monitoring platform that includes a wearable device to keep workforces safe from heat, fatigue and overexertion on the job.
- MatchRite Care: A HIPAA-compliant software platform that gives patients access to health records throughout all health systems.
- Neer: Developed a real-time water management platform that uses machine learning to help cities and private utilities save money.
- New Frontier Mobile Diagnostics: With a mission of “imaging for everyone,” the startup addresses access to care by providing high-quality, on-site diagnostic imaging in doctor’s offices, clinics and care facilities.
- Particle Space: Makes it easy for businesses to build real estate applications by providing a suite of premade services.
- Plabook: Gamifies learning and uses artificial intelligence, natural language processing and speech recognition to teach children how to read.
- PMI Rate Pro: Saves homebuyers money and makes mortgage lenders’ jobs easier.
- Ronawk: A life sciences startup that’s garnering interest in new markets, such as cultured meat.
- Splitsy: Developed a mobile application that allows users, such as roommates, to automate the process of splitting shared recurring transactions.
- Steadily: Serves landlords that want their insurance to work like other modern tools they love: fast and affordable with excellent service.
- TealHouse Labs: Aims to bring sustainable and ethical fashion products to Kansas City and beyond.
- Tesseract Ventures: Helps American industries become smarter, better connected and more efficient with its next-generation robots, smart spaces, 21st-century software and radically connected platforms.
- TripleBlind: Created a scalable solution for privacy-enhancing computation (PEC), allowing enterprises to securely share regulated and private data without decrypting it or introducing additional risks and liabilities.
- Veeper: A Shopify app that tracks a customer’s spending habits over time and solves the problem of universal discount codes, which typically cause retailers to overspend.
- Vetelligence: Uses data and artificial intelligence to help employers find not just veterans, but the right veterans, for job openings.
- Vytelle: A precision livestock company reshaping how cattle producers worldwide optimize their herds.
- Yes! Athletics: A woman-owned sporting goods company that aims to empower young female athletes by filling a gap in the sporting goods industry.
You can learn more about each of the companies here and cast your vote for round 1 before Sunday, March 6 here.