Big 50-2016 Round 2: Group 1 Vote

For round 2 of the Big 50-2016 startup competition, we’ve split the remaining 157 startups into 5 groups of roughly equal size.

The remaining startups have been groups to compete, as much as possible, against others in their market sector (or thereabouts). Of course, some sectors have many more entries than others. As a result, some groups are more loosely related than others.

For instance, Group 1 is a bit of a grab bag. These startups didn’t match up as neatly as, say, Group 3, which consists entirely of Big Data startups. Group 1 features everything from Virtual Reality to drones to wearables to – I’m not making this up – a smart adult toy based on scientific research into female arousal.

The best way to categorize Group 1 is that these startups would fit comfortably into the startup zone (Eureka Park) at CES. In fact, this is where the Startup50 team discovered many of the Group 1 startups.

These startups are pushing existing market sectors in unusual directions. Drones, for instance, have already proven themselves in various use cases, such as oil and gas and, of course, the military, but at CES this year, we saw everything from drones as toys to single-person drone copters to gigantic autonomous drones that could be used to transport heavy cargo into hard-to-reach locations.

Meanwhile, in one short year, the Virtual Reality startups we met with at CES jumped form interesting but not ready for prime time to the point where we have the major wireless carriers concocting special smartphone upgrade packages featuring VR headsets.

The market sectors covered in Group 1 include: Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning, Internet of Things, Drones & Robotics, Wearables, and Sustainability.

It’s a diverse, thought-provoking lineup, but now it’s time to vote for your favorites.

#Big 50-2016 startup voting is now open! Vote for your favorite AI, IoT drone & VR startups http://wp.me/p330ZZ-7s Click To Tweet

Of the 36 startups listed below:

• The top 18 will move on to Round 3
• The bottom 18 will be eliminated
• The top 2 will automatically make it into the Big 50-2016

Notes for voters:

• You can vote for up to 3 startups
• Your votes will be weighted from #1 (which will get 3 points) to #3 (which will get 1 point)
• Only humans are eligible to vote. Any startups deploying voting bots will be eliminated from this round and will be barred from any other Startup50 competitions this year.

If the survey below is not displaying properly on your smartphone or tablet, you may also vote by clicking here. 

Best of luck to all the startups competing!