Fear not, your favorite spring event has returned: March Ma….Midwest Madness! Four years in and we’re prepping for the best season yet. Brought to you by the team at Midwest Startups and M25, we pit the cities from our annual Midwest City Rankings against each other in a fun, competitive bracket-style tournament for Midwest Startups glory. On top of that, we’ll select one Community Champion—someone who has emerged as a leader in the city’s startup and tech community by rallying people to vote—that will be awarded the coolest trophy ever (aka the coveted framed tweet for their city)! We summarized our past tournaments and dropped some hints as to what to expect for this year’s season below.
Midwest Madness Hall of Fame
We initially launched this competition in March of 2021 as a fun way to get communities interacting with each other at a time while things were limited to a virtual environment during the COVID-19 pandemic. In our first tournament, Bloomington, IN came out on top against Cincinnati, OH. Shoutout to 2021 Community Champion honoree, Pat East, Executive Director at Dimension Mill and Principal at Flywheel Fund. While we weren’t able to truly celebrate this win in person, we decided we would try and make this tournament bigger and better than ever the following year.
And in 2022, we did just that. We brought a party to the table for this next tournament. After a fierce competition with Wichita, KS, another collegetown emerged triumphant—Columbia, MO. Shoutout to Brett Calhoun, Managing Director and Partner at Redbud VC (and the crew at EquipmentShare) for rallying the city to a big win. A few months later, we celebrated the win at the EquipmentShare HQ with hundreds of folks from the COMO tech and startup community.
After a big season of upsets in the Midwest Madness tournament in 2023, the original bracket of 64 cities was narrowed down to four cities: Toledo, OH; Bloomington, IN; Champaign, IL; Cincinnati, OH (which also happen to be our #1 seeded cities this year). Despite the close competition throughout the final round between Bloomington and Cincinnati—a repeat matchup from the final round in 2021—Bloomington came out on top. Once again, the team at the Mill and Pat East took the trophy as our Community Champion. We hosted a party at the Mill with over 100 people stopping by to celebrate the 2023 champion city.
2024 Season: What to expect + predictions
This year we’re making some *exciting* changes. We wanted to get even more folks voting and participating in this competition, so we made some alterations on how we’re going about voting. Previously, this competition was only open to Twitter/X users—and while we’ll still be actively posting daily updates—we’re hosting our poll on an external platform this year for a true bracket-style layout. Participants just have to enter a valid email address (one vote per email to keep things fair!) and make their picks for the first round. Remember strategy is key when making ALL your city picks! And yes, we’re still hosting a party in the winning city!
Victor: Toledo flames out early — losing in the round of 32 to Lincoln or the Sweet Sixteen to Cleveland or KCMO. They had a relatively easy bracket last year and don’t have the die-hard tech community like some of these cities are able to turn out year-over-year.
Cincinnati will go on another deep run — it could be their year for the ‘W’. This team always puts up a great show and has a raving proud ecosystem that has been putting up numbers. The only risk is that Cincy could get all the way to the Final Four without putting up real numbers as Region B looks to be the weakest region — so when they face Champaign or Indy or otherwise they may not have activated their fanbase like the others to get that far and could get destroyed.
The strongest #2 seed is Indy — they, like Cincy, have a very strong and loud startup scene that has both the numbers and the success stories to draw a good audience. Their lack of a dominant “alumni” community always seems to see their downfall (collegetowns always seem to go pretty far in this tournament and Indy lost to ultimate winner Bloomington, IN last year).
Abhinaya: Since the polls are running on LinkedIn and X this year, anything is possible. I was disappointed in how my picks, Louisville and Lexington, turned out last year even though the ecosystem was vibrant throughout the year. Louisville was in the top 8 last year and had great momentum to reach new milestones. This year, I am betting on Fargo and Madison to reach the finals. These are two ecosystems that grew a ton in the last year and are starting to see a more organic startup community.
We might see the Wichita and Columbia matchup in Region C as we saw in the 2021 and 2022 finals. Region B could possibly see Cincy and Youngstown in OH match up to see which ecosystem moves to the next stage. Will this be the year when a big ecosystem like Chicago and Minneapolis make it down a couple stages or will we be disappointed again? My overall pick for the champions this year is…Fargo.
Katie: I think we’ll see some of the larger metros go farther this year, carried on the backs of the voters who will only choose cities they’ve actually been to or know about. I’m predicting a good year for Ohio in general (a departure from my usual sentiment!) because of that. Even so, I’m also bullish for a relative unknown to surprise us this year (here’s maybe looking at you, Fox Cities, Terre Haute or Wheeling!). In general, I’m looking forward to seeing how this new format changes the game.
Leandro: With the upcoming 150th celebration of the Kentucky Derby, I think that Louisville will gallop into the Championship Game (after falling in last year’s Elite 8 ) with their community rallying around this anniversary and leading up to Render’s Derby Tech Summit next month.
But I believe it’s Cincinnati’s year to win it all after coming in 2nd last year. After visiting Cincy for StartupCincyWeek last Fall and knowing that community has been putting in the work in the “off-season” including adding talent to the Cintrifuse roster, the Cincy community should be positioned for an even stronger performance this year.
A mid-way matchup I’ll have my eyes on is Region C’s Sweet 16 and whether Champaign and Columbia matchup to see who has that dawg in them this year. While the Fighting Illini men’s basketball team are this season’s Big Ten Tournament Champions, their Midwest Madness squad lost an All-Star community champion from the iVentures accelerator to the transfer portal; after a Final Four run last year where they fell to eventual Champ Bloomington. While Redbud has continued to spearhead community building in CoMo and a rising national profile (and rising in our annual Midwest Startup Cities Ranking) since their lackluster performance last year “only” reaching the Sweet 16 after being the 2022 Champs.
It wouldn’t be March Madness without upsets, and I’m hoping for another Cinderella story like last year’s 10 Seed Toledo reaching the Final Four. Which COULD be #15 Iowa City if their local startup and Hawkeyes community can rally a fraction of the support and magic that Caitlin Clark has earned as she and her Iowa women’s basketball team looks to make a March Madness run fresh of a Big Ten Tournament Championship. Especially, since in the Midwest Madness bracket Round of 64 it’s #15 Iowa City vs #2 Indianapolis, Clark’s almost guaranteed future home as the #1 overall pick by the Indiana Fever.
Sam: Last year we crowned our first two-time Midwest Madness champ, and in 2024 I’m predicting we crown our second — Columbia, MO. COMO lived the championship hangover last year, knocked out in the third round by Louisville. They struggled to get supporters out to the ballot box with less than 80 votes cast in each of their three match-ups (a far cry from the 2,000+ votes cast in their 2022 championship victory). This ecosystem has a TON of pride and underdog fight, and has evolved a lot in the last 12 months. With voting moving away from just X this year, I think we’ll see them show out in droves once again to hang another banner.
My wild card city this year is Des Moines. This ecosystem is small but mighty and has the potential to punch above its weight class and surprise some folks. Don’t be surprised if we see some grassroots mobilization via Hummingbirds to take down a behemoth or two. I project they beat out Cedar Rapids, Chicago and Ann Arbor before falling to reigning champ Bloomington in the Elite 8, although an upset there IS NOT off the table.
I think South Bend will be most improved this year. They face Green Bay in the first round and would likely butt heads with the always challenging Youngstown in the second round, but I think the growing community finally has the critical mass to push through both of those early obstacles. If they do, they’ll outperform their first and second round exits of years prior, and earn a shot at taking down perennial fan favorite Cincinnati. Getcha popcorn ready.
Ruth: While I really want to cheer on Cincy again (I promise I am always rooting for the Queen City), they’re coming off a tough loss to Bloomington for the second time. I think Cincinnati will make it far in the tournament, but might lose to another collegetown in the later matchups. Unfortunately, I feel like I have to switch my loyalties going into 2024.
This year I’m crossing the Mississippi to root on OMAHA! You might be asking “aren’t they a #9 seed this year?” Yes, yes they are. I think the Omaha startup community has really grown over the past couple years. If all goes well (and they make it past two-time champion, Bloomington, IN in the second round) I think it might just be their time to shine in this tournament—great underdog material. Am I actively rooting against Bloomington? Yes again. We need to shake things up in this tournament!
Another wild card for this year: Peoria, IL. I’ve seen a lot of activity from the Peoria community so far this year, so they might have a good run going into the 2024 tournament. Let’s see if the Peoria community can rally together!
Final 2024 Predictions
- Victor: Cincinnati, OH
- Mike: Fargo, ND
- Abhinaya: Fargo, ND
- Katie: Omaha, NE
- Leandro: Cincinnati, OH
- Arianna: Champaign, IL
- Sam: Columbia, MO
- Ruth: Omaha, NE
The Timeline
Super important, mark-your-calendar-worthy dates for the tournament!
- March 18: The official Midwest Madness bracket drops for Selection Monday!
- March 19: The tournament begins with the first round of 64! Voting is open for a full week during the first round.
- March 26: Round of 32 begins.
- April 1: Round of 16 begins.
- April 4: Round of Eight begins.
- April 8: The Midwest Four compete!
- April 11: Championship Matchup — who will win?
- April 15: Results revealed and the 2024 Champion is announced!
FYI — Voting will begin at 12:00PM ET and closes at 11:59PM ET the day before the next round starts (~12 hours in-between rounds).
Which Midwest city will take the dub? Make sure to follow along with hashtag #MidwestMadness2024 on X and LinkedIn to find out! Any questions? Send an email to info@midweststartups.com and we’ll get back to you ASAP.
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