Steve Case’s Rise of the Rest tour, meant to highlight growing startup ecosystems in five Midwestern cities, will embark on its second leg next week.
Today, the tour announced the finalists for pitch competitions at each of the five stops. At stake is a $100,000 personal investment from Case and a trip to next year’s South by Southwest festival in Austin, TX.
The finalists for the Rise of the Rest pitch competition in Madison, WI, are:
—Beekeeper Labs, a company focused on collaborative software that democratizes data analytics.
—CODAWorx, a website that allows artists and designers to communicate, collaborate, and network.
—Fishidy, an app that provides maps, reports, and other tools to help anglers find the best spots to fish.
—MobCraft, a “beer tech” startup that crowdsources craft beer recipes and then brews the most popular suggestions.
—Murfie, a Techstars Boston alum that will take your CD collection and turn it into a library of digital files housed on its online servers.
—Project Foundry, a Web-based workflow management system that helps teachers and students complete personalized learning projects.
—SnowShoe, a Techstars Boulder alum making little plastic widgets that conduct electricity, sending current from the user’s body to a smartphone or tablet touchscreen for two-factor identification.
—Stemina Biomarker Discovery, which makes products that test the effects of chemical compounds and drug candidates on human stem cells.
—WholeTrees, which makes cost-efficient, sustainable building materials from forest byproducts.
The Rise of the Rest tour will hit Madison on Oct. 6 before going on to Minneapolis, Des Moines, Kansas City, and St. Louis.
