Since gener8tor launched in 2012, it has grown exponentially, evident in the nearly 700 attendees at its Winter Launch Day Wednesday night at the Edgewater Hotel.

To date, gener8tor has 42 alums who have cumulatively raised more than $75 million in follow-up financing, organizers announced. Also, two months ago, it earned a “gold” ranking as a top accelerator in the United States.

“This is a huge achievement, as Madison is the smallest market to be ranked at this level,” Co-Founder Troy Vosseller said.

Allergy Amulet (food allergen detection device), Behold.ai (software to identify abnormalities in medical images), Dattus (IoT platform for industrial machines) and Curate (web-scraping platform; formerly known as Exis) were the four graduating startups that began their program in February.

Their presentations proceeded a keynote presentation from Big Brothers Big Sisters CEO Sandy Morales, who discussed the importance of mentorship and the growing need for adult volunteers (“Bigs”) in Dane County.

“There are 12,000 ‘Bigs’ in Dane County but still over 350 ‘Littles’ who are on the wait list for a match,” Morales said. “Similarly to startups, it all starts with an introduction. Mentorship is a way to see the world.”

***

See photos of the gener8tor 2016 Winter Launch Day.