Startup of the Year announces

first 50 Semifinalists

This October, 100 of the most innovative startups from around the world will compete for the title of the 6th Annual Startup of the Year champion. Over 500 qualifying, emerging founders representing 38 countries and numerous industries that range from artificial intelligence and e-commerce to healthtech and more, were judged by dozens of industry leaders.

The team of renowned judges have been hard at work studying and analyzing all of the applications in order to select the most revolutionary, game-changing ideas and products to be showcased and celebrated at Innovate Celebrate (co-produced by Established and the Consumer Technology Association) in Boston from October 15 - 17.

Representing the U.S. and beyond (there is even a startup from Uganda!), we are thrilled to introduce the first 50 Semifinalists that will venture to Boston to connect with industry titans, participate in mentor sessions and pitch coaching, and battle for prizes and potential cash investment through the Startup of the Year competition.

Stay tuned for the next Semifinalists announcement in the coming weeks. There will also be a participatory online poll where your vote will help choose the Audience Choice Award! Sign up for our updates here so that you don’t miss a beat.

For tickets to Innovate Celebrate where you can meet the Top 100 Semifinalists and see their innovative products, register here.

First 50 of 100 Startup of the Year Semifinalists
Listed alphabetically with vertical category and location

70MillionJobs | Employment
San Francisco, California
70MillionJobs is a for-profit job board for the 70 million Americans with a criminal record. The company was a participant in Y Combinator (YC17), an early-stage investor incubator in Mountain View, California.

Altopa, Inc. | Health & Wellness
Seattle, Washington
Oblend allows users to make custom herbal remedies at home. It is the world's first at-home dispensary and app that gives people the power to find, customize, and create a variety of precise products from dozens of therapeutic herbal extracts and oils within minutes.

Anyware Solutions | Fintech
Copenhagen, Denmark
Anyware Solutions provides meaningful smart home experiences for connected living that offers users peace of mind and adds convenience to everyday life. Anyware Solutions offers seamless Smart Living on the award-winning Anyware Smart Adaptor that you fit into your lamp as easy as you would install a light bulb.

Aperiomics | Health & Wellness
Ashburn, Virginia
Aperiomics is helping chronically sick patients get answers. Aperiomics the only company identifying every Bacteria, Virus, Fungus, and Parasite in one test. It reimagines the way the medical field tests for pathogens.

AppsCo | Cybersecurity
St. Louis, Missouri
AppsCo connects people, cloud services, and connected devices simply and securely through a centralized dashboard while providing control and monitoring over sensitive company data flows.

Ario | AR
Norfolk, Virginia
Ario is a productivity software that increases safety and efficiency in industrial environments by leveraging augmented reality to give teams the ability to create and share spatial information in real time. It provides real-world data in the real world.

Athena Security | Security & Surveillance
Austin, Texas
Athena Security’s mission is to prevent crime through artificial intelligence. Athena’s smart security camera and alarm system uses human-computer vision to detect threats. When a mugger pulls out a knife or gun, or when a kidnapper grabs a child, Athena can recognize the threat and stop it before it becomes a crime.

Attently | Marketing
Fairbanks, Alaska
Attently helps users create campaign messages that win by generating audience data.
Most technology companies focus on digital interaction, but Attently learns from behavior in the real world to improve political messaging, PR, and marketing campaigns.

Bartesian | Lifestyle
Kitchener, Canada
Bartesian is a single serve capsule based craft cocktail maker that makes it simple for everyone to enjoy authentic cocktails. It serves premium cocktails on demand.

Bitsbox | Education
Boulder, Colorado
Bitsbox is a learning system that teaches real coding to kids. Every month, Bitsbox sends crazy fun app projects in the mail, and kids build the apps on the website. Real JavaScript on real mobile devices.

Buoy Labs | Smart Home
Santa Cruz, California
Buoy Labs makes a smart home water device that measures and categorizes water usage with remote shut off that eliminates 90% of insurance losses from water damage and cuts consumption by up to 10%.

C2RO Cloud Robotics | Cloud Services
Montreal, Canada
C2RO makes robots work for your business delivering cloud run AI applications to any connected robot. CR2O offers AI software solutions in real-time via the cloud. Robots connected to the C2RO Cloud Robotics SaaS platform demonstrably increase business efficiency and improve the customer experience.

Cambridge Cancer Genomics | Health & Wellness
Cambridge, United Kingdom
Cambridge Cancer Genomics are a leading precision medicine start-up, creating intelligent software to enable oncologists to monitor response to cancer therapy in near real-time leading to faster and more effective clinical decision making and better patient outcomes.

Candy House | Smart Home
Palo Alto, California
Candy House has reinvented the key with Sesame, a robot or retrofit smart lock that is installed over the deadbolt. It adheres directly to the door and grips onto the lock’s knob. Users can lock or unlock the door via Bluetooth.

Drop Software, Inc. | VR
San Francisco, California
Drop lets you dive into an immersive internet searching and browsing experience designed for virtual reality.

FastVisa.us | Immigration
Dallas, Texas
FastVisa.us is the new standard for immigration workflow automation. With a solution that sees the whole picture and covers all the details, people can finally automate the immigration workflow from end-to-end. FastVisa offers a single, integrated platform to serve a high volume of applicants from intake and billing all the way to filing, saving time at every step along the way.

FenSens, Inc. | IoT Hardware
Austin, Texas
FenSens brings new car technologies to all vehicles regardless of age with a focus on platform, plug and play installation, and affordability for any car owner. FenSens is a smart, wireless parking sensor.

Fing | Cybersecurity
London, Great Britain
Fing provides award winning products for device recognition, network, cybersecurity, and troubleshooting. It plugs into an existing WiFi router and allows users to secure and troubleshoot their network from anywhere.

Hashcut | Content Creation
Sunnyvale, California
Hashcut is building AI to automate gaming highlights so users can enter any Twitch or YouTube gameplay URL and return the best highlights that match.

HiberSense, Inc. | Smart Home
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
HiberSense connected climate control for every room delivers awesome comfort and up to 40% energy savings in homes with forced air heating and cooling systems. It acts as a network of smart thermostats adjusting the climate in every room so that it’s perfect.

InSpirAVE | Fintech
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania & New York, New York

InSpirAVE's social e-commerce platform inspires people to multiply their savings and afford big purchase goals responsibly without debt for life's special moments, furthered by the support of their network.

Merchants and financial institutions partnering with InSpirAVE are equally realizing its socially impactful benefits — through sales and access to a more engaged, expanded customer-base they would not have had otherwise.

IssueVoter | Civic Tech
New York, New York
IssueVoter allows users to receive alerts on new bills before they are passed, send their opinions to their reps before Congress votes, and tracks the bill’s outcome.

iWABOO, Inc. | Retail Technology
Mountain View, California & Milan, Italy
iWABOO is the bridge between tech products and retail shelves, powered by AI solutions. Unprecedented retail disruption means companies must make data-driven decisions to boost agility, gain a competitive advantage with price optimization to delight shoppers. It is a business development platform for makers.

Kiss & Tell | E-commerce
Austin, Texas
Kiss & Tell is a global wedding and group travel booking platform that streamlines event planning, travel booking, guest list management, and group communications into one seamless app.

Lifeina | Health & Wellness
Paris, France
Lifeina is the world's smallest intelligent fridge for the safe transport and storage of fragile medication.

Lilu, Inc. | Health & Wellness
New York, New York
Lilu, Inc. is building the next generation of products to help moms pump, track, and manage their breast milk supply. Lilu enhances the breast pump by providing breast massage and compression while users pump, helping them to express more milk.

Litesprite | Health & Wellness
Bellevue, Washington
Litesprite builds games to help people manage chronic health conditions with data that delivers insights to clinicians and players. Litesprite's platform is designed to strengthen the patient-provider relationship. Litesprite's mental health video game has won a U.S. Surgeon General Award.

Lunii | Education
Paris, France & New York, New York
Lunii offers immersive audio story experiences through an innovative device and original content. In a world dominated by screen time, Lunii allows children to expand their imagination and creativity.

Mazima Retirement Plan | Fintech
Kampala, Uganda
Mazima Retirement Plan is helping Africa’s informal sector (80%+ of the workforce) have a platform to save for retirement. MRP sets out to provide everyone an opportunity to open and fund an IRA.

MemoryWell | Publishing
Washington, DC
MemoryWell is a digital platform for senior story telling. With MemoryWell, users can build a collaborative interactive timeline around a life story, adding photos, videos, letters, and documents.

Milo Life | Health & Wellness
Miami, Florida
FDA cleared for home use, Milo’s smart rapid result clinical and lab-grade blood, urine, and saliva tests wirelessly sync results to a mobile app and cloud in minutes.

Mixtroz | Social
Franklin, Tennessee
Mixtroz is a networking app that makes events more valuable for organizers and attendees. It
Drives attendees from phone to face-to-face in real time increasing engagement and collecting data.

NEEO, Inc. | Smart Home
Cupertino, California & Switzerland
NEEO focuses on simplifying the smart home for the mass market. The revolutionary remote with simple setup for your smart home controls the TV, lighting, heating, and more.

neo 360 | Video
New York, New York
neo 360's patent-pending technology provides users with a new way to interact with video on any mobile device. After the video is encoded with the neo 360 encoder, the end user can fully control the speed, direction, and frame at which the video is played back, giving the viewer a whole new engaging experience.

Obe, Inc. | Pets
St. Louis, Missouri & Sacramento, California
Obe creates smart products and services for pet parents to keep pets healthier and happier and for pet industry partners to build value. Obe’s first product is the Obe ProBowl, a dishwasher-safe bowl with a smart base, that connects via WiFi to the user’s phone.

OpticSurg, Inc. | AR, Health & Wellness
New York, New York
OpticSurg is transforming surgery with augmented reality by creating an AR software platform that surgeons can use in real time to do their jobs better, minimize complications, and save lives.

Park & Diamond | Health & Wellness
Brooklyn, New York
Park & Diamond is improving cycling safety with a helmet that rolls up into the shape of a water bottle and looks like a hat. Park & Diamond enables users to live confidently with precisely engineered products to decrease their risk of life altering injuries.

Pass It Down | Publishing
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Pass It Down is an award-winning storytelling platform innovating how communities collect, preserve, and tell their stories.

Penji | Marketing
Camden, New Jersey
Penji offers unlimited graphic design at a flat monthly rate (no hourly billing, can cancel at any time). Penji helps agencies, marketing teams, and startups with all of their graphic design needs.

PolyPort | Cybersecurity
Denver, Colorado
PolyPort protects valuable 3D assets through a secure collaboration and delivery platform. With PolyPort’s unique platform user’s co-located workforce can use their local tools and high performance hardware to work on sensitive designs while protecting their IP.

Qoins | Fintech
Atlanta, Georgia
Qoins is a new and yet simple way to pay off debt. Users can use the spare change from everyday purchases to automatically pay off debt faster than ever.

Reap | Agribusiness, SaaS
Las Cruces, New Mexico
Reap is a new mobile app that puts user’s farm field log on their tablet or smartphone and takes the mystery and risk out of farming by delivering actionable information mined from a massive body of relevant data.

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Rose Gold | Business
Austin, Texas
Rose Gold helps women achieve financial independence by launching small beauty based businesses with the support and tools to help them win.

Seek | AR
Lehi, Utah
Seek allows users to create, publish, discover, and share AR all in one social platform. By publishing content to Seek, users can instantly access the largest AR audience in the world.

Sleepbox | Real Estate
Boston, Massachusetts

Sleepbox creates a new type of technology-driven, micro-hotel concept for the new generation of travelers that can be launched anywhere, even in airports and historical city centers.

Stefanka | Retail Technology
Quebec, Canada
Stefanka helps shoppers find the right products and sizes and enables consumers to find the ideal fit. Clothing, uniforms, and workwear retailers along with military clothing and sportswear retailers are just a few examples. Stefanka has a suite of solutions for every need. The result: fewer returns and a better shopping experience.

Unruly Studios | Education
Boston, Massachusetts
Unruly Studios has created the first STEM toy that teaches kids to code and get them active. Unruly teaches kids the logic of coding and challenges kids 6 and up to apply STEM skills to the real world, creating active games to play with friends.

Valisure | Health & Wellness
New Haven, Connecticut
Valisure is a novel digital pharmacy that chemically batch-tests all medications for quality and consistency. It is delivered to consumers with an easy-to-understand certificate of analysis.

WeatherCheck | Fintech, Real Estate
Louisville, Kentucky
WeatherCheck monitors property by address for weather damage, notifies property managers and owners when damage has occurred, and provides data to support valid insurance claims.