How we chose 10 hot IoT startups to watch

The competition to find 10 hot IoT startups to watch began with 79 contenders, 14 of which were eliminated in round 1 for not really being IoT startups or for not following directions. (Pro tip: if you try the hard-to-get strategy – making us chase you down for the information we already asked for in my query – we won’t play that game. We just hit “delete” instead.)

In Round 2, visitors to our website, Startup50.com, cast votes for their three favorite startups, with votes weighted at five points for a first-place vote, two points for a second-place vote and one point for a third-place vote. Only the top 20 startups moved into the final round.

From those 20 we chose the 10 Startups to Watch based on a combination of funding, value proposition, market positioning, the strength of the leadership team and named customers. (For more on the selection process, please refer to this in-depth explanation. A few of the specifics have changed from this competition that focused on storage startups, but the overall process is the same.)