By LAURA LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News
The Austin Chamber of Commerce Wednesday night named 12 companies to its A-List of Startups for 2014.
In the “Emerging” category, for companies that have raised less than $1 million, the winners were Datical, Compare Metrics, Embrace, TeVido, TrustRadius and Spot on Sciences.
“You look at the companies that won last year and this year, it’s a great honor to be part of that group, because they are next generation of startups that are pushing us forward,” said Bart Bohn, founder of Embrace, customer relationship management software.
“It’s such a strong entrepreneurial business environment in Austin and it’s such an honor to be part of it,” said Jeanette Hill, CEO of Spot On Sciences, the maker of HemaSpot, a medical device that allows for remote blood sampling.
“It really means that all your hard work paid off. People see that what you’re doing is exciting and innovative and game changing and Austin is the place to be game changing,” said Laura Bosworth, CEO and co-founder of TeVido BioDevices, which uses 3-D printing technology to reconstruct and print breast tissue.
In the “Growth” category, for startups that have raised more than $1 million, but less than $10 million, the winners included Umbel, Square Root, Set.fm and TurnKey Vacation Rentals.
And in the “Scale” category, for companies that have raised more than $10 million, the winners were Novati and Chaotic Moon.
More than 250 startups applied for the Austin A-List awards, a 65 percent increase in participation from last year’s list, said Michele Skelding, senior vice president of global technology and innovation for the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce.
Skelding and Hugh Forrest, executive director of South by Southwest Interactive, announced the winners at the inaugural State of Innovation event at the ACL Live at the Moody Theatre. Several hundred people attended the event which featured fireside chats by Laura Kilcrease, managing director of Triton Ventures, and Gene Austin, CEO of Bazaarvoice and Bob Metcalfe, professor of innovation at the University of Texas, inventor of Ethernet and co-founder of 3Com, and Mike Maples Jr., partner at Floodgate Ventures.
In addition, Mayor Lee Leffingwell proclaimed May 7th as “Austin Innovation Day.” He also discussed the city forming an “Innovation District” around the Dell Medical School. And Thomas G. Osha, managing director of Innovation and Economic Development at the Wexford Science and Technology, gave a talk about the development of Innovation Zones.
