A-LIST is designed to recognize homegrown companies in various growth stages. These companies are developing new ways to connect with customers while transforming their industries and creating a robust culture for their employees. See this year's finalists below!


Bootstrapped Finalists

  • 49 Financial

    49 Financial strives to serve people by taking a holistic approach when looking at their financial situation. Whether they can add value through implementing a full financial plan or by complementing your current financial situation, their goal is to meet you where you are.

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  • GetScale

    GetScale vertically integrates growth marketing, highly skilled salespeople, data, and proprietary systems to deliver truly incremental customers for our partners. They offer three main services: High Velocity Sales (Attract and convert thousands of new customers quickly and efficiently, while reducing your customer acquisition cost), High Volume Recruiting (Attract, recruit, and onboard candidates across a number of industries by partnering with our world class recruiting-as-a-service team), and Funnel Consulting (Receive real-time feedback to identify insights and help streamline your sales and recruiting funnels).

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  • Kiro Action

    Kiro Action is a home, disaster relief, pop-up hotel, workers accommodation, veteranhousing, ADU (accessory dwelling unit) and government relief structureall-in-one. Their solutions are put together in hours with our patent-pendingdesigns without any heavy equipment or specialized machinery. Their solutionsserve the locations that are most in need with a respectable housing solution.Their solutions are real homes, built above code and over-engineered, canwithstand fires, high winds, have working bathrooms and electrical features;all like a normal home. They are not like some of the awful solutions on themarket that are a tent or glorified shed. Their homes look and feel like a realhouse because they use the same building technologies in the commercial andhousing industry, but with advanced materials and features.

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  • Loot Rentals

    Loot Rentals curates inspirational spaces through great design to cultivate deeper connections. Their team leverages their vast inventory of vintage and modern items, with the white glove service and attention to detail they're known for, to flawlessly execute your vision. Loot Rentals is proud to be Austin’s first and premiere boutique rental company since their launch in 2011, and winner of “Best Rental Company 2019” at their local industry awards.

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  • Urban Betty

    Urban Betty Salon is an award-winning hair salon in Austin, Texas, specializing in hair cutting and coloring services. Due to its continued success, the salon expanded and opened a second location in February of 2019 in Austin's South Congress neighborhood. Urban Betty has been named one of the top 200 salons in the U.S. by Salon Today Magazine nine times. Additionally, Urban Betty is now a Green Circle Salon! They repurpose and recover up to 95% of the resources that were once considered waste; materials such as hair, leftover hair color, foils, color tubes, aerosol cans, paper, and plastics.

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Seed & Angel Finalists

  • AIQUEOUS

    Founded during the climate change-driven drought of 2015, the company focused on modernizing water conservation programs and services. Wanting to highlight a data-driven approach to these utility programs, one word kept returning to mind – Intelligence. Combining that intelligence with aqueous (of, like, or containing water) gave AIQUEOUS its “IQ.” AIQUEOUS now brings its intelligence and passion to customer management, program and service design and delivery, and data integration and analytics.

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  • Boutiq

    "AIRBNB PROBS"

    Boutiq feels traveler's pain in low confidence in listing accuracy, inconsistent cleanliness, amenities, & guest experience, soulless & uninspired furnishings & décor, and unprofessional hospitality. They also know the Owner's and Investor's surgeon: buying & financing is complex & cost-prohibitive, management is time-consuming, and hospitality is difficult & frustrating

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  • CarbonBetter

    CarbonBetter has spent over a decade serving clients as a trusted energy logistics partner, and they work with companies from all industries to measure, reduce and offset their footprint, and then certify their progress. They also help developers of carbon credit and clean energy projects and carbon removal technologies maximize their impact and ROI.

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  • Miracle Foundation

    Miracle Foundation's work in the past was grounded in helping orphans in need to have a better quality of life but has evolved to also ensure that every child has an opportunity to grow up in a family. They've learned that children who are separated from their families yearn to go back and feel the love and belonging a family can offer. At Miracle Foundation, their vision is a family for every child in our lifetime.

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  • Underclub

    Underclub is a luxury underwear subscription service supporting their community in feeling their most confident, superior selves. They believe in using their platform and voice to highlight the beauty and value of diversity across colors, shapes, and sizes.

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Series A & B Finalists

  • ActivTrak

    ActivTrak helps digital workforces work wiser and thrive. More than 9,000 customers and 550,000 users have deployed our workforce analytics cloud to gain insights and metrics about digital work so they can measure and optimize productivity and wellness with the employee in mind. These innovations have been recognized by the Deloitte Technology Fast 500, the Inc. 5000 and the Brandon Hall Excellence in Technology award. Based in Austin, Texas, ActivTrak is backed by Sapphire Ventures and Elsewhere Partners, and led by a seasoned team of software industry veterans.

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  • ConverseNow

    ConverseNow uses their best-in-class conversational AI that automates drive-thru and phone orders with remarkable accuracy, loved by guests and restaurant staff alike.

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  • HackNotice

    HackNotice is the easiest way to find out when hackers steal your data or leak your identity. Find hacks that you have been a part of, see what hackers know about your identity, and use our security recovery to stop attacks. Let HackNotice monitor your digital life and alert you to new events as soon as they happen. HackNotice is a threat intelligence provider that helps consumers and businesses identify and protect against potential risks and respond to hacks through real-time alerts, around the clock monitoring, and actionable recovery recommendations. Indexing up to a quarter of a billion records each day, HackNotice provides users with the information and visibility they need to protect their digital identities. Founded in 2018, HackNotice is based in Austin, TX.

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  • Interplay Learning

    Interplay Learning's mission is to build better training, careers and lives for thier customers and their employees in the HVAC, Plumbing, Electrical, Solar & Facilities Maintenance industries by delivering scalable and highly effective digital learning simulations. Their platform recreates life-like VR scenarios for skilled trades workers, allowing them to learn in a more engaging environment. The result is a workforce that is confident, highly skilled and ready in just a few weeks, not years.

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  • Osano

    Osano, a leading data privacy platform, simplifies privacy compliance by helping organizations build, manage, and scale their privacy program to increase trust, stay compliant, and do the right thing. Founded in Austin, Texas, in 2018, the fully remote data privacy management company solves for consent management, data subject rights, assessments, and vendor risk — all in one place. Osano is recognized as a leader in consent management and a momentum leader in data privacy management by G2. The organization is also recognized as a Best Place to Work for 2023.

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  • SchooLinks

    SchooLinks is a college and career readiness platform with curriculum that engages students throughout the process of self discovery, career education and college planning and application. The student-centric experience is able to create a wealth of behavioral data, and its machine learning algorithms leverage those data to personalize college recommendations and content to further drive student engagement. SchooLinks then serves actionable insights to counselors that help them act in real time to become more effective. On a district level, the sophisticated data models power a full suite of accountability tools to allow administrators to monitor and achieve desired college and career readiness outcomes

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Series C or Later

  • AlertMedia

    AlertMedia's fully integrated threat intelligence system and two-way multichannel emergency communication software help thousands of organizations globally keep their people safe, informed, and connected during any emergency or critical incident. Every day, news headlines remind us of the number and severity of critical events organizations face that threaten employee safety or business continuity. As the world continues to experience an increase in emergency events, organizations are constantly forced to monitor disparate sources of information in search of useful intelligence about emerging risks.

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  • Cart.com

    Cart.com is the first end-to-end ecommerce software and service provider built to help Brands find more customers, sell in more places, and deliver their products more easily. They provide tools that allow for a modular, data-rich, fully integrated approach to scaling up. We are on a mission to put Brands back in charge of their ecommerce journey and in control of their customer relationships. Cart.com exists to help Brands crush scale.

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  • Growth Acceleration Partners

    Growth Acceleration Partners is a strategic technology solutions partner providing an exceptional experience in Digital Transformation consulting and the Delivery of Software and Data Solutions via world-class data and software engineering teams. By building strategic, long-term partnerships with clients, they develop extensive domain knowledge combined with deep technical expertise, resulting in a smooth, transparent process and transformative outcomes.

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  • Super Coffee

    Super Coffee only use ingredients in their coffee that are great-tasting, great-for you, and sustain you for the long haul. Nothing shady. No added sugar. Only positives. They believe that with the right energy, you can do anything. It means saying “yes” to whatever comes your way, and running with it.

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  • ZenBusiness

    ZenBusiness is a trusted partner that gives entrepreneurs the power and support to scale their business. We use technology and automation to provide fast and low-cost services, expert support, and a personalized dashboard that puts everything entrepreneurs need at their fingertips.

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Venture Capital Firm Of the Year

  • LiveOak Venture Partners

    LiveOak Venture Partners is an Austin-based, early-stage venture capital firm that partners with visionary entrepreneurs to build world class, category dominating companies. They focus on providing first institutional capital for tech and tech-enabled services companies based in Texas. They are entrepreneur-first, multi-segment, and full life-cycle investors.

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  • Mercury Fund

    Mercury is an early-stage venture capital firm partnering with entrepreneurs to drive innovation across Middle America. Mercury’s investment themes target B2B SaaS and B2B2C marketplace platforms enabling the digital transformation of markets, industries, and customer relationships. With $750M under management, Mercury has created over $9 billion of value with an operationally focused investment strategy helping startups achieve rapid, sustainable growth. Mercury is headquartered in Houston with offices in Austin, Texas and Ann Arbor, Michigan.

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  • S3 Ventures

    S3 Ventures is the largest venture capital firm focused on Texas. Backed by a philanthropic, multi-billion-dollar family for over seventeen years, they empower great entrepreneurs with the patient capital and true resources required to grow extraordinary, high-impact companies in Business Technology, Consumer Digital Experiences, and Healthcare Technology. With more than half-a-billion dollars under management, they lead Seed, Series A, and Series B investments with the capacity to follow-on for the life of a company.

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  • True Wealth Ventures

    True Wealth Ventures is an early-stage stage venture firm, led by two Austin-based women, Sara Brand and Kerry Rupp. The fund invests in women-led companies improving human and environmental health. Their investment thesis is that women-led companies perform better financially, as reported in many studies, yet are an untapped market with approximately 2% of venture dollars going to female-founded start-ups over the last decade.

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