Over 131 applicants were considered before the judges narrowed it down to the top 25 semifinalists in the Fall 2015 Arizona Innovation Challenge.
Led by the Arizona Commerce Authority (ACA), the Challenge is a bi-annual business plan competition for promising early-stage companies in high-growth industries where early-stage startups vie for a slice of the $1.5 million grant, up to $250,000, to grow their business in Arizona.
Out of the 25 companies who made the list all but one, GlycoSurf, from Park City, UT, is located in Arizona. The percentage breakdown of the industries represented include:
- IT – Software: 56%
- Bio & Life Sciences: 20%
- Cleantech/Renewable Energy: 8%
- IT – Hardware 4%
- Advanced Materials: 4%
- Advanced Manufacturing: 4%
- Aerospace & Defense: 4%
Want to learn more about the companies?
Allbound – a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Partner Sales Acceleration solution, is helping businesses realize more revenue from indirect sales partners through their predictive technology and gamification platform. They recently hosted a SaaS PingPong tournament, check out the winner here.
Beacon Biomedical – is a medical diagnostic device that provides easy, accurate and affordable blood tests for earlier cancer detection.
ClearVoice – a content marketing platform that helps connect brands, publishers and writers via an authorship scoring system.
CrowdMics – turn your smartphone into a microphone. This startup recently hit the jackpot at #ETY15.
Dataware Ventures – is a software company that helps enterprise application software (EAS) vendors optimize the performance of their applications via its patent-pending micro-specialization techniques.
Notebowl – is a Campus Life Solution: a comprehensive platform for universities that goes beyond the standard learning management system (LMS) by putting the entire university experience in one place. CEO and Founder of NoteBowl, Andrew Chaifetz was a recent guest on The Startup Journal.
[youtube]https://youtu.be/oZySS9HR4yk[/youtube]
Read about the Spring 2015 winners here who added $250,000 to their pocket.
Read all of our coverage of the Arizona Innovation Challenge here.
Congrats to all of the Semi-Finalists! Very exciting times in Arizona.