Austin is one of the nation's most well-known tech startup hubs, and on Wednesday evening we put a spotlight on 50 of the area's fastest-growing and most exciting startups during our 50 on Fire party at Capital Factory.
Among those 50 startups, we named 10 Blazer winners and honored them with the red jackets that have become a hallmark of our annual celebration. We also have five more startups among the additional "Inno Picks" category, which has a Blazer winner of its own.
You can learn more about how we select the 50 on Fire list and how the Blazer winners are chosen below. But, first, let's get to that list of Blazer winners and a video.
Software/AI New Knowledge
CPG Naturally Austin
Cybersecurity Threatcare
Design/Marketing Handsome
EdTech Upswing
Health Care/MedTech KindHealth
AR/VR Interplay Learning
Inno Picks Osano
Social Impact Diligent Robotics (tie) ICON (tie)
Lifestyle Backtracks
Supporters Amos Schwartzfarb
A bit on how we do this: Our 50 on Fire list started a couple months ago when we started asking folks in the local startup community to nominate companies they feel have the most traction -- or really exciting inflection points. Our team reads the nominations, we check our own notebooks and prior coverage, conduct standard web searches and check in on recent funding filings with the SEC, new product announcements and new customers.
Then, we whittle the list of nominations down and add in any companies that we feel are no doubt "on fire" even if they weren't nominated. And that's how we get to 50.
Then we bring in judges, who are typically accelerator leaders, venture capitalists and sources that we know and trust to cast a vote for the Blazer winners in each category. This year, that included Morgan Flager (Silverton Partners), Claire England (formerly of Central Texas Angel Network) Preston James (DivInc), David Altounian (St. Edward's University) and Mitchell Jacobson (Austin Technology Incubator).
A huge congrats to the 2019 Blazer winners and all of this year's 50 on Fire winners. And a big thank you to those who nominated a startup, the Blazer award judges and everyone who came out to party with us at Capital Factory.
Next up for Inno: The 2020 Startups to Watch, a list of the startups we're most excited about going into 2020, which we'll pair with an event in January. So, stay tuned. See you soon.
