100 of the most exciting startups in New York City

The Berlin-based magazine The Hundert has been compiling lists of Europe's most exciting startups for years.

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For the ninth edition of the magazine, the team focused on startups in New York City instead.

A panel of 40 judges, including Business Insider's Henry Blodget and Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, chairman of Spitzer Partners, chose the finalists. 

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Tina Exarhos (CMO) and Athan Stephanopoulos (President). Saskia Uppenkamp

Below, check out 100 of the most exciting startups in New York City, republished with permission from The Hundert.

Axel Springer Digital Ventures, Berlin Partner, KPMG, SevenVentures and Weberbank provided support for the Hundert Vol. 9.

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Disclosure: Axel Springer is Business Insider's parent company.

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Abacus: Intelligent expense reporting

abacus
Omar Qari (cofounder, CEO), Joshua Halickman (cofounder, CTO) and Ted Power (cofounder, CPO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Fintech
Founded in 2013
20 employees
Funding $3.5M / 3 rounds

Founded in 2013 by Omar Qari, Ted Power, and Joshua Halickman, Abacus set out to reinvent the way companies reimburse their employees. Abacus helps businesses intelligently manage their employee expenses using data and behavior analysis to make recommendations, as well as automate expense creation and approval.

Using heuristics, expenses are curated to help administrators focus on anomalies and high priority items, while processing next-day reimbursements, enforcing company expense policy, reconciling corporate cards, and syncing with accounting software.

Abacus is partnering with companies like Salesforce, Slack, and Lever so that busy finance teams have a smarter way to manage business expenses.

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ActionIQ: Solving the biggest problem marketers face

actioniq
Tasso Argyros (cofounder, CEO), Nitay Joffe (cofounder, CTO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Big Data
Founded in 2014
35 employees
Funding undisclosed

Every business leader should be asking themselves: am I getting the most out of my data? For too long, the answer to this question has been no.

ActionIQ is changing that with its world class Marketing Activation Platform, dedicated to giving marketers and analysts freedom and speed. While the major marketing clouds handle only 1% of customer data and interactions, ActionIQ provides the only solution that scales to 100% of customer data, analyzes it at unprecedented speeds, and lets marketers execute campaigns in hours--all without calling IT.

The platform is the fastest way for Global 2000 companies to connect all of their first party digital and offline data, generate insights on what drives customer behavior, and directly connect with all of their marketing apps.

The result is improved targeting, personalization, and reach across all marketing channels. Based in New York City, ActionIQ is backed by leading investors including Sequoia Capital and FirstMark Capital.

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Adore Me: The new face of lingerie

adore me
Morgan Hermand-Waiche (founder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

E-commerce
Founded in 2012
100 employees
Funding $11.5M / 5 rounds

Adore Me is an e-commerce startup disrupting the lingerie market with affordable, fast-fashion and stylish lingerie. In four years, Adore Me raised $11.5M in funding and has 6.5M users, over 1M Facebook followers and 100 employees across the US and Europe.

In 2015, Adore Me was ranked #14 on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing companies in America, topping the charts as the #2 fastest-growing company in retail and #2 fastest-growing company in NYC.

Up until now online-only, Adore Me is expanding into retail and TV advertising and the brand has big plans to dethrone Victoria's Secret.

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Andela: Africa's first elite engineering organization

andela
Christina Sass (cofounder, COO), Ian Carnevale (cofounder, Brand Director) and Jeremy Johnson (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Technology Services
Founded in 2014
300 employees
Funding $41M / 3 rounds

Andela extends engineering teams with world-class software developers. Based in Lagos, Nairobi, and NYC, Andela recruits the most talented developers on the African continent, shapes them into technical leaders, and places them as full-time distributed team members with companies that range from Microsoft and IBM to dozens of high-growth startups.

Founded by Christina Sass, Ian Carnevale, Jeremy Johnson and Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, and backed by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, GV and Spark Capital, Andela is building the next generation of global technology leaders. There are five job openings for every software developer looking for a job in the United States.

Africa, meanwhile, has the youngest, fastest-growing population on earth, with more people joining the labor force over the next 20 years than the rest of the world combined. By connecting top employers to the brightest individuals on the African continent, Andela provides a bridge to close the talent gap while investing in the smartest, most creative minds in software development.

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ASAPP: AI for enterprise

asapp
Gustavo Sapoznik (founder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Artificial Intelligence
Founded in 2014
29 employees
Funding undisclosed

Each week seems to offer some new bold announcement about humanity's march towards intelligent machines — machines that will transform nearly every aspect of our daily lives.

Yet reflecting on our routines, it is clear machine intelligence remains more the stuff of science fiction movies than something that has meaningfully changed the way we work or interact with the world.

How do we actually realize the promise and take the intermediate steps necessary toward the ultimate goal? ASAPP has assembled the leading minds in artificial intelligence to tackle the complex, but incredibly impactful problem of bringing intelligence to the machines we use every day while working with leading Fortune 100 enterprises to solve the most vexing issues facing their businesses.

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Authorea: Accelerating discovery through online collaboration

authorea
Alberto Pepe (cofounder, CEO) and Josh Nicholson (Chief Marketing and Product Officer). Saskia Uppenkamp

Media
Founded in 2013
10 employees
Funding $2.25M / 2 rounds

It has been said that in order to cure cancer, we must first cure cancer research. Authorea is improving how researchers work and make breakthrough discoveries by tackling one of the most important parts of the research cycle: scientific communication.

Authorea’s mission is to reinvent the scientific article — the main vehicle of scientific dissemination — that hasn’t changed in format and scope since the birth of the scientific method. They are bringing the power of the modern web to a 400-year-old process in order to make research more open, collaborative, accessible, transparent and data-driven. In scientific terms, Authorea is a paradigm shift.

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Bark & Co: Building a Disney for dogs

bark & co
Henrik Werdelin (cofounder,), Carly Strife (cofounder, COO) and Matt Meeker (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

E-commerce
Founded in 2012
160 employees
Funding $77M / 3 rounds

Bark & Co is the New York-based startup dedicated to making dogs and their people happy. Since launching in 2012 with BarkBox, a monthly box of funny toys, treats and chews that you can’t find together anywhere else, the dog-obsessed humans at Bark & Co have shipped more than 25 million products to date.

The company has since expanded with a goal of building a Disney for dogs — having the backs of dog parents for everything and creating its own products, experiences and entertainment with BarkShop, BarkLive, and BarkPost. BarkBox is designed, from the packaging to products, to create moments of insane joy for dogs.

There is a new, fun theme each month. Bark & Co paw-picks the best treats and innovative toys to match a dog's unique needs, including allergies or heavy chewers. While the BarkShop is loaded with products for dogs to play, eat, nest and more, BarkPost creates original content for dog people, helping dogs share their stories with the world using the power of humans.

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Blue Apron: Changing the way people cook at home

Blue-Apron
Matt Wadiak, Matt Salzberg, and Ilia Papas (cofounders). Blue Apron

Food
Founded in 2012
4,000 employees
Funding $193.8M / 5 rounds

Blue Apron makes cooking fun and easy. They’re changing the way people cook at home. With a weekly subscription service, they deliver all the ingredients in exactly the right proportions, along with beautifully printed recipe cards.

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Bluecore: Powering individualized interactions by unifying customer and catalog data

bluecore
Max Bennet (cofounder, VP of Product), Mahmoud Arram (cofounder, CTO) and Fayez Mohamood (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Marketing Technology
Founded in 2013
100 employees
Funding $27M / 2 rounds

Founded in 2013 by Fayez Mohamood, Mahmoud Arram and Max Bennett, Bluecore (originally TriggerMail) empowers marketers to take meaningful, immediate action on behavioral and product data with speed and simplicity.

Bluecore’s customer experience platform is designed to simplify the process of ingesting and analyzing terabytes of behavioral data to create precise audiences and experiences across channels. Backed by FirstMark Capital and Georgian Partners, Bluecore is one of New York City’s fastest growing SaaS start-ups and works with more than 200 customers representing more than 325 high-end apparel, electronics, automotive and other consumer brands.

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Bond Street: Financing small business growth

bond street
David Haber (cofounder, CEO) and Peyton Sherwood (cofounder, CTO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Fintech
Founded in 2014
27 employees
Funding $11.5M / 2 rounds

Bond Street is transforming small business lending through technology, data and design. The company was founded on the belief that small business owners are the foundation for growth of the economy, and yet today’s banking system has left them behind.

Customers fill out a 10-minute online application and receive a decision within 48 hours of submission. The company provides one to three year term loans from $50,000 to $500,000 range with rates starting at 6%. Bond Street was founded in 2014 by David Haber and Peyton Sherwood.

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Callida Energy: Reinventing the way buildings work

callida energy
Timothy Lynch (cofounder, VP of Energy Engineering) and Raphael Carty (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Sustainability
Founded in 2013
4 employees
Funding undisclosed

Enabling facility managers to reduce energy waste, sustainability managers to reduce carbon emissions and building occupants to achieve a healthy and comfortable workplace, Callida is reinventing the way commercial buildings work for everyone.

The Callida App lets every occupant have a voice in office comfort ratings that are visualized in real-time on the facility manager’s dashboard and Callida lets the facility manager know when the office is empty to turn down cooling/heating to generate savings with no discomfort. Callida also monitors demand and energy consumption to prevent setting new peak usage and to increase overall cooling/heating efficiency.

Incubated in 2013 at the Dreamit NYC Accelerator, Callida has been installed in commercial real estate and municipal sites, achieving HVAC energy savings of 30+%. Callida is dedicated to their mission: Make every commercial building the most efficient, sustainable and productive workplace possible, globally.

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Canary: Meaningful information about your home

canary.is
Chris Rill (cofounder, CTO), Jon Troutman (cofounder, CCO), Adam Sager (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Smart Home
Founded in 2012
130 employees
Funding $41M / 3 rounds

Canary empowers people to live fearless lives. They seamlessly integrate state-of-the-art hardware with sophisticated software to create simple, effective products that solve real problems and make life easier.

By harnessing powerful computer vision and machine learning algorithms to interpret an extensive array of sensor data, they identify meaningful information about what happens at home — creating a richer and more immediate connection to the people and places that matter most.

A daily habit for customers (who check into the app more than three times a day), Canary launched in 15 countries in just 15 months and is available in retail stores across North America and Europe. Smarter Technology. Superior Design. Real Security.

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Casper: The ultimate sleep startup

casper
Luke Sherwin (cofounder, CCO), Gabriel Flateman (cofounder, CTO), Neil Parikh (cofounder, COO), Constantin Eis (cofounder, Global Managing Director) und Philip Krim (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

E-commerce
Founded in 2014
200 employees
Funding $69.96M / 3 rounds

Casper is a global sleep company that launched in 2014 with one perfect mattress sold directly to consumers — eliminating commission-driven, inflated prices. Its critically acclaimed sleep surface was developed in-house, has a sleek design, and is delivered in a small, "how did they do that?"-sized box.

The company is one of the fastest growing consumer brands of all time, and its product line has increased to include sheets and pillows. Casper was named one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies in the World, and its eponymous mattress was crowned one of TIME Magazine's 'Best Inventions of 2015'.

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Cheddar: Business news for millennials

Jon Steinberg
Jon Steinberg (founder). Craig Barrit/Getty Images/Stringer

Digital Media
Founded in 2016
1-10 employees
Funding $13M / 2 rounds

The video news network covers the most innovative products, technologies, and services transforming our lives through the lens of the companies driving these changes. Cheddar focuses on business content for the 18-34 market and broadcasts live daily from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, with exclusive CEO and founder interviews and the best of technology and media coverage.

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ClassPass: Access the world's largest network of fitness studios

classpass
Payal Kadakia (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Fitness
Founded in 2013
180 employees
Funding $84M / 5 rounds

Founded in 2013, ClassPass is a monthly subscription service providing access to the world’s largest network of boutique fitness studios and gyms.

With tens of thousands of classes available at over 8,500 locations worldwide, ClassPass makes working out more engaging, accessible, and affordable. This gives members unprecedented choice and flexibility by offering a diversity of options, including cycling, Pilates, yoga, boot camp, strength training, dance and more.

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Codecademy: Teaching 25 million people the skills they need to find jobs

codecademy
Zach Sims (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Education
Founded in 2011
35 employees
Funding $42.5M / 3 rounds

Codecademy, founded in 2011 by Zach Sims and Ryan Bubinski, teaches more than 25 million people around the world an invaluable skill: coding.

As an online interactive platform that offers free coding classes in different programming and markup languages, the company’s focus is on creating an interactive, engaging learning experience paired with practical courses that have helped students in nearly every country in the world become more employable.

Codecademy works with governments around the world, including The White House, as well as companies like Bloomberg. They have also raised more than $40m from top tier investors, including Union Square Ventures, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and Naspers.

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Common: Co-living in a network of furnished, community-minded residences

common
Brad Hargreaves (founder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Real Estate
Founded in 2015
30 employees
Funding $23.35M / 2 rounds

Co-living, co-eating, co-playing, co-creating. This is what it means to live life in common, as it is a leading co-living company with a network of community-focused shared housing.

Common offers renters a safe and comfortable alternative to the risky rental market where dealing with expensive brokers and finding roommates on Craigslist have previously been the best options for those new to a city. Headquartered in New York, Common launched in 2015 and now operates properties in New York, Washington D.C. and San Francisco.

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CommonBond: Using data and technology to lower the cost of student loans

commonbond
David Klein (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Fintech
Founded in 2012
75 employees
Funding $78.6M / 4 rounds

CommonBond, New York City’s top-funded fintech startup, is a tech-enabled student lender tackling one of the biggest challenges facing millennials in the US: student debt.

With over $1.3 trillion of outstanding student debt in the US, this problem impacts more than 43 million Americans. Founded in 2012 by three MBAs who faced the challenge of paying for business school with student loans, CommonBond believes student loans should be more affordable, more transparent and easier to manage online.

To make this a reality, CommonBond offers an online student loan evaluation tool to help everyone with student loans, regardless of income, determine the best ways to manage their debt. Student loan refinancing options help members save an average of $14,581 and an employer platform enables companies to attract and retain top talent by contributing directly to employees’ student loan payments. CommonBond was recently named one of Inc. Magazine’s '50 Best Workplaces in the US'.

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Compass: Guiding you home

compass
Robert Reffkin (founder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Real Estate
Founded in 2013
309 employees
Funding $210M / 4 rounds

Compass is a technology-driven real estate platform dedicated to creating a seamless and intelligent home buying, selling, and renting experience.

Combining the country’s top agents, proprietary market insights, and integrated mobile and web technologies, the company is developing the future of real estate decision-making. With real estate being one of the last sectors of the American economy that hasn’t been transformed by data and technology yet, founders Ori Allon and Robert Reffkin aim to change this with their platform, as well as through locations in New York City, San Francisco, Washington DC, Boston, Miami, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, the Hamptons, and Aspen.

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Crisis Text Line: Free crisis support at your fingertips, 24/7

crisis text line
Nancy Lublin (founder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Big Data
Founded in 2013
55 employees
Funding $25M / non profit

Crisis Text Line was born out of DoSomething.org, the largest organization for young people and social change.

Dozens of DoSomething.org members were texting in to ask for personal help and Nancy Lublin (CEO) came up with the idea for Crisis Text Line and launched it in August 2013. Within 4 months, it was being used in all 295 area codes in the USA.

Crisis Text Line believes that every person who texts in deserves a human response, which is why they have a community of 1700 trained crisis counselors who respond to every text message that comes to their short code, 741741. To date, Crisis Text Line has processed over 22 million messages, and continues using technology to improve their service.

They house the largest open mental health data set in the world, which aims to empower journalists, researchers, and citizens to understand the crises Americans face. In the future, Crisis Text Line looks to expand internationally, and offer their services in different languages.

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CrowdTangle: Social analytics made simple

CrowdTangle
Brandon Silverman (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Social Analytics
Founded in 2013
17 employees
Funding $2.2M / 1 Round

CrowdTangle is one of the leading social analytics tools in the world. The founders, Brandon and Matt, are long-time friends who met in college and both worked in the non-profit sector before starting CrowdTangle.

The platform makes it easy for publishers to discover and track content, measure social success and identify influencers; clients include everyone from the New York Times to BuzzFeed to Real Madrid and Facebook.

Over the coming years, the CrowdTangle team will be focused on building solutions that not only help publishers continue to grow their social audience but also start to monetize that reach as well.

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Dash: Smarter driving every day

dash
Brian Langel (cofounder, CTO) and Jamyn Edis (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Connected Car
Founded in 2012
10 employees
Funding undisclosed

Dash is the world's leading open connected car platform, with a vision of making any car a "smart car." Their telematics solutions harness the driving data exhaust — what they call the "automotive graph." For everyday drivers, the products make driving smarter, safer, greener and more affordable.

For enterprises, their solutions help make transportation operations more efficient. Dash partners include OEMs, fleets, insurers and government agencies — and enterprises leverage their data and machine learning capabilities to develop predictive maintenance algorithms and advanced analytics.

Their developer platform (Chassis API), as well as the IFTTT channel, allow third parties to build lightweight connected car solutions. Their products have won awards from the White House, Dept. of Energy, Ford and Edmunds, and have been used by nearly 350,000 drivers in more than 100 countries.

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Digital Ocean: Cloud computing designed for developers

digital ocean
Mitch Wainer (cofounder), Moisey Uretsky (cofounder, CPO) and Ben Uretsky (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Cloud
Founded in 2011
300 employees
Funding $123.41M / 4 Rounds

DigitalOcean, known for its "developer first" mentality, was founded in 2011 with the mission to simplify the complexities of infrastructure by offering one simple and robust platform for developers to easily launch and scale their applications.

It has become the second largest and fastest growing cloud computing platform in the total number of public facing apps and websites, according to Netcraft. More than 750,000 registered customers have launched more than 20 million Droplets (cloud servers) combined on DigitalOcean, nearly doubling from 10 million six months ago.

The company is now investing heavily in advancing its platform to further support growing teams and larger applications. The company has raised $123 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Access Industries, IA Ventures, CrunchFund, and Techstars and has data center regions throughout the world. And, getting started on DigitalOcean takes less than a few minutes!

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digitalundivided: Finding untapped opportunities in innovation

digitalundivided
Danielle Robinson Bell (Director of Marketing & Corporate Partnerships) and Kathryn Finney (founder, Managing Director). Saskia Uppenkamp

Entrepreneurship
Founded in 2013
5 employees
Funding Social enterprise

Since 2013, digitalundivided has impacted over 2,000 people and helped raise $15M in investments.

In 2016 their groundbreaking research, #ProjectDiane, drew widespread buzz for disrupting the dialogue around women of color and tech entrepreneurship. The report was widely shared and received national media attention for quantifying the often overlooked state of black women in the tech entrepreneurship space.

The findings put a unique spotlight on the problem of inclusion in the innovation space, leading DID to develop a “first of its kind” solution. DID’s BIG Innovation Center and its resident BIG Accelerator is the only space and program dedicated to the growth of high-growth tech businesses founded by Black & Latina women. Located in Atlanta, the first cohort started in Fall 2016.

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Dropel Fabrics: Creator of water, stain, and odor repellant natural fabrics

dropel fabrics
Bradley Feinstein (cofounder, President) and Simardev Gulati (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Material Science
Founded in 2015
5 employees
Funding undisclosed

Leveraging material science and process technology, Dropel creates water, stain, and odor repellent natural fabrics.

Their textiles can handle anything life throws your way. Rain, coffee, wine, and pretty much everything else doesn't stand a chance. Dropel works with clients as a textile development partner. They handle everything from sourcing to production of fabrics.

Since launching in 2015, the demand for their textiles has transcended markets ranging from high-end apparel to uniforms to home furnishing. Their most recent collaborations include Mister French and AREA with many others slated for 2017.

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Edenworks: Greens so fresh you can spare the dressing

edenworks
Jason Green (cofounder, CEO), Ben Silverman (cofounder, Chief Design Officer) and Matt La Rosa (cofounder, Construction Manager). Saskia Uppenkamp

Agriculture
Founded in 2013
10 employees
Funding $2M / 1 round

Edenworks is pioneering a new level of freshness and nutrition in local food by operating aquaponic vertical farms to grow ready-to-eat greens and fresh fish for grocers.

Virtually all salad in America comes from California, Arizona, or Mexico — a journey that can last a week. Edenworks’ distributed production means they’re in store a day after harvest. As a result, Edenworks can grow crops that are flavorful and nutritious but delicate, like microgreens, rather than crops that are optimized for shipping but not very tasty, which is what dominates salad today.

Edenworks both develops the technology and operates the controlled environment farms. Their engineering team focuses on two major themes: automation to improve efficiency, and using data to create the perfect spring day for each crop. Founded in 2013, Edenworks is based in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and has a multidisciplinary team of architects, engineers, agronomists, and growers.

Find them in NYC Whole Foods Market stores in 2017.

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Electric Objects: Discover great art on digital displays

electric objects
Jake Levine (founder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Consumer Technology
Founded in 2014
14 employees
Funding $8M / 2 rounds

Electric Objects was founded in 2014 in NYC by founder & CEO Jake Levine, with the belief that discovering, connecting with and bringing home art should be as easy as finding that great song or watching that favorite movie.

Electric Objects is on a mission to make that a reality. EO2, the 2nd generation product, which launched in October 2016, is a digital display designed from the ground up to showcase art. It pairs with a mobile app to showcase a diverse collection of art in your home, so you can choose to display whatever you feel: a waterfall GIF or a classic Van Gogh.

It's the next great movement in art. To date, the company has raised $8M in Seed and Series A funding, with participation from First Round Capital, RRE, Bessemer Venture Partners, betaworks, and notable NYC entrepreneurs like Dennis Crowley, David Karp, Matt Mullenweg, and others.

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EpiBone: Growing bones from your own cells

epibone
Sarindr Bhumiratana (cofounder, CSO) and Nina Tandon (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Biotechnology
Founded in 2013
10 employees
Funding undisclosed

EpiBone is a company engineering living, anatomically precise, functional skeletal grafts from patients' own cells. EpiBone was founded by MIT and Columbia-trained bioengineers, and their patented methods combine the most advanced techniques in digital fabrication with the cutting-edge stem cell science, generating grafts with a perfect fit, and no risk of rejection.

At this point, EpiBone has been successfully tested in animal models, and hopes to begin clinical trials in with patients soon. EpiBone has received many technical awards, including the designation as World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers in 2015.

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EquityZen: Where private investors access proven startups

equityzen
Atish Davda (cofounder, CEO), Shri Bhashyam (Cofounder, Shareholders) and Phil Haslett (Cofounder, Investments). Saskia Uppenkamp

FinTech
Founded in 2013
10 employees
Funding $3.5M / 1 round

Founded in 2013, EquityZen is reinventing private market investing. Just as E-Trade provides the ability to buy and sell public stock, EquityZen provides the ability buy and sell private company stock, with the companies' approval.

Twenty years ago, Amazon went public just four years after being founded; today, companies remain private for over a decade before they IPO. This longer timeline creates a gap between the company's exit and personal timelines of the employees and investors who have helped build the company. Having conducted ~1,000 private placement transactions already, EquityZen is bridging this gap with a transparent and digital platform.

The impressive team's background means EquityZen has the hybrid DNA of Wall St and Silicon Valley. Their relentless focus on building a business with integrity has allowed EquityZen to attract 10,000+ sophisticated and wealthy investors from 15+ countries.

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Exo: Normalizing the consumption of insects

exo
Greg Sewitz (Cofounder, Co-CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Food
Founded in 2014
6 employees
Funding $5.2M / 2 rounds

Exo is normalizing the consumption of insects via their first product: protein bars made with cricket flour. Exo bars were conceived by the three-Michelin-star chef Kyle Connaughton of the The Fat Duck in England, and are made with all natural ingredients.

All bars are free of gluten, soy, dairy, refined sugars and preservatives, and crickets provide a comlete source of protein that also has a much lower environmental impact as crickets produce 100x less greenhouse gasses than cows.

The founders, Gabi Lewis and Greg Sewitz, founded the company in 2014 in their dorm room at Brown University after noticing the lack of an introductory vehicle for insects in the US. Fast forward to now, and they've raised $6M in funding, launched five flavors, been stocked in major retailers across the country and attracted supporters like Nas, Tim Ferriss, Amelia Boone and more.

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Fatherly: How to win at parenting

fatherly
Mike Rothman (cofounder, CEO) and Simon Isaacs (cofounder, Chief Content Officer). Saskia Uppenkamp

Media
Founded in 2015
14 employees
Funding $2M / 1 round

Fatherly is the fastest-growing parenting site on the web, targeting millennial parents who are entering the most inquisitive and acquisitive phase of their lives.

By focusing on dads as well as young moms, Fatherly is able a) to capture both sides of the parenting market, b) provide a differentiated content offering in a space over-saturated with “mom” content, and c) hone in on a key insight that millennial parents increasingly share parenting responsibilities and purchasing decisions.

Fatherly has been nominated twice by the Webby’s as 'Best Parenting Site on the Internet' in just its first year in existence.

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Flatiron Health: Fighting cancer with organized data

flatiron health
Zach Weinberg (cofounder, President, COO) and Nat Turner (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Health Tech
Founded in 2012
302 employees
Funding $328M / 3 Rounds

Flatiron Health is a healthcare technology company that's raised over $320MM from Google Ventures, Roche and others to transform cancer treatment using organized data.

They believe the biggest revolutions in cancer treatment will happen by creating the digital infrastructure to organize patient data and track it more efficiently. Typically, when someone has cancer — unless they are 4% of the population part of a clinical trial or research hospital — their records won’t be aggregated as part of a larger, collaborative system.

Flatiron is building a "learning healthcare" platform that will enable all patients' cancer experiences to help others facing the disease. Flatiron’s 300-person team includes some of the best minds in healthcare, tech and cancer including oncologists, nurses, data scientists and engineers.

They have a hugely ambitious plan, but it’s working — they recently entered into a major collaboration with the FDA to study real-world effects of immunotherapy treatment.

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Floored: 3D visualization platform for commercial real estate

floored
David Eisenberg (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Real Estate Tech
Founded in 2012
38 employees
Funding $6.4M / 2 rounds

Floored is the leading commercial real estate technology company for interactive 3D visualization and space planning software.

Founded in 2012 by David Eisenberg, Dustin Byrne and Judy He, with a focus on capturing the world in 3D, they have built a profitable company of 40 people, with cutting-edge technology in the field of computer graphics and virtual reality.

They count some of the largest commercial real estate companies in the world as our customers and are excited to continue to work to move the real estate world from using 2D data to communicate to using 3D data to tell rich, interactive stories about space.

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Fundera: The easiest way to shop and save on a small business loan

fundera
Rohan Deshpande (cofounder, CTO) and Jared Hecht (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Fintech
Founded in 2014
50 employees
Funding $14.9M / 2 rounds

Fundera is the most trusted online marketplace for small business loans. With one simple application, small business owners can apply to all of the industry’s top lenders, find out what they qualify for, and compare rates to find the right deal.

The platform aims to make finding a loan as simple as possible by providing the resources borrowers need to make real comparisons between loan offers. Fundera’s Customer Success team educates business owners about their options and helps them navigate the process, with the goal of making lenders compete for their business instead of the other way around.

Founded in 2014 by former GroupMe cofounder Jared Hecht and former Gilt software engineer Rohan Deshpande, Fundera has helped over 4,000 small businesses secure over $250 million in financing to date. The marketplace also provides free tools like credit monitoring for small business owners, and has built most-trafficked blog on small business finance in the country.

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Gimlet Media: High-quality narrative storytelling

gimlet media
Alex Blumberg (cofounder, CEO) and Matthew Lieber (cofounder, President). Saskia Uppenkamp

Media
Founded in 2012
59 employees
Funding $7.5M / 2 rounds

Gimlet is a media company focused on high-quality narrative storytelling. What distinguishes Gimlet from other companies is a passion for accuracy and journalistic integrity across a range of programming.

Gimlet's well-honed editorial process combines intelligence, candor, and playfulness in order to create compelling stories that keep listeners engaged from beginning to end. Gimlet believes that listening creates empathy and that its purpose is to help people better understand the world and each other.

Founded in 2012 by Alex Blumberg and Matthew Lieber, Gimlet is built on a team of experienced managers and award-winning journalists, hosts, and producers. Gimlet content has been featured extensively in the press and in 2015, Gimlet was one of Fast Company’s ‘Top Ten Most Innovative Companies in Media’. Current shows include StartUp, Reply All, Science VS, Surprisingly Awesome, and Sampler.

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GIPHY

Alex Chung
Alex Chung (cofounder, CEO). Alex Chung (cofounder, CEO).

Digital Media
Founded in 2013
56 employees
Funding $150.95M / 4 rounds

GIPHY is GIFs. They are the first and largest GIF search engine, where thousands of artists, brands, and pop culture moments make today’s expression, entertainment, and info a little more moving.

Whether it's a new internet meme, last weekend's episode of SNL or even the coverage of the 2016 Election, GIPHY power's the world's ability to search, share and communicate in GIFs. Additionally, GIPHY supports the growing GIF artist community, while also providing creation tools for the casual fan.

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goTenna: the first off-grid communication device

goTenna
Jorge Perdomo (cofounder, VP Institutional Business) and Daniela Perdomo (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Communications
Founded in 2013
20 employees
Funding $9.3M / 2 rounds

Based in Brooklyn, goTenna is the first and only company to enable anyone to use their phones to text and share GPS location regardless of cell service, Wi-Fi or even satellites.

In 2014, goTenna launched its award-winning flagship device that quickly became synonymous with next-generation off-grid communications. Now, goTenna is the first to commercialize a 100% off-grid, mobile, long-range consumer-ready mesh network with the release of goTenna Mesh, a smaller, internationally-available device that allows users to connect over greater distances by automatically and privately relaying messages through one another.

goTenna was co-founded by siblings Daniela and Jorge Perdomo whose vision to create resilient, people-powered connectivity ignited during Hurricane Sandy, when up to a third of cell towers and power stations were knocked out.

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Greenhouse Software: Making recruiting a competitive advantage

greenhouse software
Daniel Chait (cofounder, CEO) and Jon Stross (cofounder, President). Saskia Uppenkamp

Software
Founded in 2012
215 employees
Funding $60.13M / 6 Rounds

Greenhouse Software designs tools that help companies source, interview, hire and onboard the right talent. With locations in NYC and San Francisco, their central goal is to teach an entire company how to hire by optimizing the recruiting process.

This means they find better candidates, conduct more focused interviews, and make data-driven hiring decisions. Founded by Daniel Chait and Jon Stross, Greenhouse was recognized as one of the 'Best Places to Work' by Crain’s New York Business.

The Greenhouse team currently works with over 1,500 of the world’s most innovative people-driven companies, including Airbnb, Slack, IDEO, Oscar Health and more.

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Handy: The platform for on-demand home services

handy
Oisin Hanrahan (cofounder, CEO), Umang Dua (cofounder). Saskia Uppenkamp

Home Services
Founded in 2012
120 employees
Funding $110M / 4 Rounds

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in New York City, Handy is changing the way people receive and provide home services, an $800 billion market.

Co-founders Oisin Hanrahan and Umang Dua have guided the company through exceptional growth, and in the process, fostered a better home service experience by building a technology-enabled platform connecting customers to independent professionals.

In just four years, Handy has expanded to 28 cities across 15 states and three countries. The company has facilitated over 2.5 million bookings, served over 500,000 customers and activated over 75,000 independent professionals. Handy brings to customers convenience, exceptional ease-of-use and world-class customer service – all with the click of a button. For professionals, the Handy platform makes it possible for them build their own small businesses, have a flexible schedule that they control and meaningful income opportunities.

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Happify: Evidence-based solutions for better emotional health

happify
Tomer Ben-Kiki (cofounder, CEO) and Ofer Leidner (cofounder, President). Saskia Uppenkamp

Digital Health
Founded in 2012
15 employees
Funding $16.5 M / 3 rounds

Happify delivers evidence-based interventions for emotional, behavioral and mental health and wellbeing in highly engaging digital formats.

Co-founded by Tomer Ben-Kiki and Ofer Leidner, Happify delivers programs, activities and exercises based on decades of scientific research in the fields of positive psychology, CBT and mindfulness. Happify offers free and premium memberships to more than 3 million users worldwide. Since launching in 2012, Happify quickly learned that its platform can improve access to readily available emotional health and wellbeing solutions for health plan members and employees of major corporations.

Through Happify Health, the company’s new enterprise offering, Happify provides close to 60 programs created by leading experts through its online platform and app. With high engagement outcomes and solutions for population health, Happify Health addresses resilience, mindfulness, depression, anxiety, chronic pain and mood disorders on-demand at any time of day.

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Harry's: A great shave at a fair price

harry's
Jeff Raider (cofounder, CEO) and Andy Katz-Mayfield (cofounder, CEO). Christoph Lange

Men's Grooming
Founded in 2013
600 employees
Funding $287.1M / 6 Rounds

Harry’s is a company that manufactures and sells razor blades and grooming products to brands and consumers all over the world. Harry’s Inc. is headquartered in both New York City and Eisfeld, Germany.

Its New York offices are home to Harry’s, the direct-to-consumer men’s grooming brand founded in 2013. Harry's was created to provide men with a return to the essential shaving experience -- simple, well-designed products offered at a fair price. The German team oversees blade manufacturing at the century-old razor factory that Harry’s merged with in 2014.

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Homepolish: Custom interior design at an hourly rate

homepolish
Noa Santos (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Interior Design
Founded in 2012
50 employees
Funding $20 M / 1 round

Homepolish delivers personal and flexible interior design, by the hour, nationally.

Whether you're looking to make an old space feel new again, gut renovate, or tackle a problem area, we bring the country's most talented designers and fanatical customer support to your project, without the egos, commissions, and expensive headaches of going at it alone. Since its launch in late 2012, Homepolish has grown to over 500 interior designers, and collectively designed over 10,000 homes and offices nationwide, ranging from accessorizing small studio apartments for renters to renovating $15M penthouses for homeowners.

With over 1 million followers on Instagram and a digital magazine featuring wholly original content, Homepolish has established itself as the go-to brand for daily inspiration and creative design ideas for today’s savvy consumer.

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Hungryroot: Fresh, feel-good foods ready to eat in under 7 minutes

hungryroot
Franklin Becker (Chief Culinary Officer). Saskia Uppenkamp

E-commerce
Founded in 2014
15 employees
Funding $5.7M / 2 rounds

Hungryroot is a brand of fresh healthy indulgent foods using vegetables and other wholesome ingredients to recreate the comfort foods that people know and love. They offer a line of over 30 products spanning carrot noodle pad thai to chickpea cookie dough, all packed with protein, fiber and nutrients and ready-to-eat in under 7 minutes.

Customers can order Hungryroot directly from its website where they have the option to subscribe to a weekly or bi-weekly product bundle. Hungryroot products are also sold in select Whole Foods, FreshDirect, and on Amazon Fresh.

Only 6% of Americans eat the recommended amount of vegetables while 74% are overweight. Hungryroot was founded by Ben McKean, former Groupon Exec, and Franklin Becker, Top Chef Masters alumnus, to help solve this problem.

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HyperScience: Automating low-, medium- and high-skilled labor

hyperscience
Krasimir Marinov (cofounder) and Peter Brodsky (cofounder). Saskia Uppenkamp

Artificial Intelligence
Founded in 2014
26 employees
Funding $18M / 3 rounds

HyperScience is an artificial intelligence company specializing in back-office automation for Fortune 500 and government organizations. Their machine learning software takes over work that people are doing today by learning how they’ve done it in the past. Individual human capital is then free to focus on more complex tasks.

The team, which has offices in New York and Sofia, Bulgaria, is also partial to a game of tennis, chess, or Catan.

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InVision: Powering the future of digital product design

hyperscience
Ben Nadel (cofounder, Lead Engineer) and Clark Valberg (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Design Software
Founded in 2011
230 employees
Funding $135M / 6 rounds

Twitter and Apple use it, Forbes & Fast Company recommends it, and it powers digital product design at 70% of Fortune 100 companies: InVision is an end-to-end design platform that provides over two million people with the power to prototype, review, refine, manage and user test web and mobile products.

It simplifies virtually every aspect of the product design workflow and makes collaboration a core part of the process, for everyone from project managers to designers to developers and writers. Rather than spending tons of money & hours coding a concept so developers can test it, users can create a high-fidelity prototype in seconds.

Founded in 2011 by Ben Nadel and Clark Valberg, InVision today drives the product design process at leading companies including Disney, IBM, Walmart, Verizon and General Motors. Backed by Accel, ICONIQ Capital, FirstMark Capital, Tiger Global and others, InVision is headquartered in New York City with a remote workforce of over 230 employees worldwide.

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IrisVR: Instant VR for the building industry

irisvr
Nate Beatty (cofounder, CTO) and Shane Scranton (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Virtual Reality
Founded in 2014
14 employees
Funding $1.625M / 1 Round

IrisVR creates tools that empower everyone in the building industry to better communicate and understand design using virtual reality. The company started in 2014.

Shane Scranton (CEO) had an architectural visualization company where he saw how difficult it was for project stakeholders to understand building models and blueprints. Nate Beatty (CTO) was an avid programmer.

After the release of the Oculus Rift DK2, Shane and Nate partnered to find a way to allow people to immerse themselves in their models so they could make more informed design and construction decisions. After months of work, Prospect was born.

Now, anyone can navigate through their 3D model in seconds using the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive without having to learn new software. IrisVR has also created Scope, VR software for mobile phones where users can share 360 degree views of a space using Google Cardboard or Samsung Gear VR.

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Jukely: Thousands of concerts for a single flat rate

jukely
Bora Celik (founder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Subscription Tech
Founded in 2014
15 employees
Funding $11.3M / 3 rounds

Jukely is a live music membership. As part of a monthly membership, members attend concerts and shows buffet-style — all you can listen to.

Using the Jukely app or website, members can discover new musicians and DJs, stream music, explore things to do near music venues before and after shows, and put themselves on the guestlist to any of the thousands of shows Jukely members attend each month.

The membership is available in 14 U.S. cities (New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, Atlanta, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, Portland, Seattle, Austin, Houston, Dallas) as well as London and Toronto.

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Juno: The fresh approach to ride sharing

talmon marco
Talmon Marco (founder). Noam Galai/Getty Images

Transportation
Founded in 2015
200 employees
Funding undisclosed

By putting drivers first and taking a smaller share of the profit (leaving more for drivers), Juno wants to pave the way for better rider experiences. Launched in New York City in spring 2016, they are currently running a beta program.

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Justworks: Freeing entrepreneurs to focus on what matters

justworks
Isaac Oates (founder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Human Resources
Founded in 2012
160 employees
Funding $53M / 4 rounds

Growing a business can be both immensely rewarding and incredibly complex. Justworks saw the opportunity to help growing businesses by giving entrepreneurs resources to make their company a better place to work.

Founded in 2012, Justworks’ simple, all-in-one platform takes care of a business’ foundational needs by automating payments, HR, benefits, and government paperwork. Justworks believes that big or small, all teams deserve the best. It levels the playing field with seamless payroll, great and affordable benefits, and comprehensive compliance coverage, so businesses can work fearlessly.

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Kisi: Keys made easy

kisi
Maximilian Schuetz (cofounder) and Bernhard Mehl (cofounder). Saskia Uppenkamp

Internet of Things
Founded in 2013
15 employees
Funding $1.5M / 1 round

Kisi was founded in 2013 by Bernhard Mehl, Max Schuetz, and Carl Pfeiffer in Munich, Germany. Today, Kisi helps hundreds of organizations streamline their operations and enhance security.

Their applications range from small brick-and-mortar operations to multi-location enterprises looking to overhaul outdated systems. They are also the top access control system choice among coworking spaces, with other clients including Casper, DigitalOcean, Cushman & Wakefield, Yesware, Percolate, and Harry’s.

Their keyless entry solution has been recognized as one of the most innovative advancements in smart office technology on the market today. If you’re looking to improve security and help revolutionize access control, give them a buzz.

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LittleBits: Celebrating the moment of invention

Ayah Bdeir
Ayah Bdeir (founder). Jonathan Leibson/Getty Images

Electronics
Founded in 2011
101+ employees
Funding $62.34M / 5 rounds

littleBits™ is empowering kids everywhere to create inventions, large and small, with its platform of easy-to-use electronic building blocks. Bits™ snap together with magnets to allow anyone to learn, build, and invent with electronics—no soldering, wiring, or programming required.

The library includes 9 kits and 69 Bits, with products sold in over 60 countries around the world and used by over 14,000 educators as an engaging tool for making STEM/STEAM more accessible to all students.

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Lover.ly: Meet your virtual wedding planner™

loverly
Kellee Khalil (founder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Media
Founded in 2012
8 employees
Funding $7M / 3 rounds

Lover.ly is a digital destination that has helped plan and inspire weddings for over hundreds of thousands of brides, all of which have been oh-so-special.

In just a few years, they've become the most sought-after source for all things “I Do," serving up expert advice, inspiration, product recommendations, celebrity insider scoops, and fashion & beauty hacks that modern couples, bridal parties and wedding guests can use to stay organized and in-the-know.

They're also the first-ever app-based Virtual Wedding Planner, offering perfect, flat-fee wedding planning packages and round-the-clock support for couples looking for extra help with their big day.

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Maker's Row: Manufacturing made easy

maker's row
Matthew Burnett (cofounder, CEO) and Tanya Menendez (cofounder, CMO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Manufacturing
Founded in 2012
20 employees
Funding $2.5 M / 2 rounds

Maker's Row is the destination for American made. They help brands and businesses connect with local factories through an academy, project bidding software and marketplace of factories.

With a network of 11,000 American factories and 120,000 brands, they have helped millions of products come to life. Doing their part to reshore the production of goods back to the USA, the company connects businesses of all sizes with opportunities to discover and communicate with domestic manufacturers, as well as offering courses dedicated to production, sourcing, quality-control, etc. for people starting out on the maker path.

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Managed by Q: Running the office the easy way

managed by q
Dan Teran (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Office Services
Founded in 2014
500 employees
Funding $42M / 4 rounds

Known as the operating system for offices, Managed by Q was built on the idea that running an office isn’t easy. Q is the platform for office management that makes it easy to run an office as it takes on all aspects of managing a physical space and integrates them into one beautiful interface.

The Q platform centralizes office management services through software that coordinates regularly-scheduled cleaning, maintenance requests, supply stocking, and hundreds of other office services. The platform allows users to leave feedback on tasks completed, request special projects and more.

All services are managed through robust web and mobile applications, and fulfillment is handled by Q’s exceptional network of specialists. Q has raised $42 million in funding to date, is headquartered in New York City, and currently operates in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco.

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Maven: The first digital clinic for women

maven
Kate Ryder (founder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Healthcare
Founded in 2014
12 employees
Funding $4.5M / 2 rounds

Women in America make 80% of all health decisions for themselves and their families. But the current healthcare system is not exactly female-friendly.

This fact is all too obvious for any mother who has ever had to miss work to get care for her child, or any student struggling to get birth control, or any woman who has worried all night because she can’t get a simple answer from her doctor. Founded in 2014 by Kate Ryder, Maven makes it easier for women to get immediate, professional care, from someone they trust. Wherever they are, whenever they need it.

It has a network of 700+ doctors, nurse practitioners, mental health providers, and specialists in all areas of women’s and children’s health, and has made it easy for tens of thousands of women to connect with them directly via video appointment or private message—whether it’s for a prescription or just for peace of mind. The end goal? To help women across the world have better access to affordable care.

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Mediachain Labs: Connecting media to its creator and online history

mediachain labs
Jesse Walden (cofounder), Arkadiy Kukarkin (CTO) and Denis Nazarov (cofounder). Saskia Uppenkamp

Media
Founded in 2015
6 employees
Funding $1.5M / 1 round

Imagine if you could know everything about an image in your feed, just by virtue of seeing it—who made it, its story, origin and everything said about it online. Mediachain Labs wants to connect creators and audiences directly through media.

Founded by Denis Nazarov and Jesse Walden, the team is leading the open source development of a universal media library that automatically connects media to information about it using content recognition technology. Mediachain raised seed funding by Union Square Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz to build an open platform that empowers developers to innovate the way we share, discover and even monetize media online.

The first prototype automates attribution for creators and organizations participating in Creative Commons publishing, including partners such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Getty Images, and the Digital Public Library of America.

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Mic: Rethink the world

Mic
Jake Horowitz (cofounder, Editor-at-large) and Chris Altchek (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Media
Founded in 2011
160 employees
Funding $32M / 4 rounds

Mic is a diverse news and media company that exists to help young people make sense of a rapidly changing world. Mic informs and entertains with original reporting and videos on the issues that will define the future.

Mic reaches 65M millennials in the U.S. and 100 million people around the world each month. The company was founded in 2011 by Chris Altchek and Jake Horowitz. In 2016, Mic has honed its editorial with breakout stories on the 'Black Lives Matter'-movement, the 2016 Presidential campaign, and beyond; grown its revenue by over 250%; doubled its employee count. In the year to come, Mic will double down on its video offerings with streaming platforms, substantially expand its newsroom, and continue to grow its advertising business.

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Modern Meadow: Leather reimagined

modern meadow
Andras Forgacs (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Biofabrication
Founded in 2011
42 employees
Funding $53M / 6 rounds

Modern Meadow is a Brooklyn-based company pioneering a new age of biologically advanced materials. Founded by Andras Forgacs, David Williamson, Susan Schofer and Suzanne Lee, they are harnessing the power of design, biology, and engineering to produce the world’s first biofabricated leather.

Their materials will enable new design and performance possibilities beyond those in either traditional leathers or synthetics, with ‘tunable’ properties that can be light, strong, thin, translucent or have unique new textures. Started in 2011 in Missouri, the team moved to Brooklyn in 2014 to continue R&D.

Modern Meadow have raised $53.5 million in financing, enabling them to focus on fine-tuning and scaling the innovative biofabrication process in preparation for scale-up and a commercial launch of their sustainable leather material. They have a talented and diverse team of over 40 people with expertise in molecular biology, material science, engineering and design, who believe the world’s greatest challenges can be solved with creative, innovative technologies.

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Mogul: Share information with women worldwide

mogul
Tiffany Pham (founder, CEO). Audrey Froggatt

Media
Founded in 2014
50 employees
Funding undisclosed

Mogul is an award-winning technology platform reaching 18 million women per week across 196 countries and 30,470 cities. Founded in 2014 by Tiffany Pham, Mogul is ultimately democratizing information, creating economic and educational opportunities for women worldwide by enabling users to connect, share information, and access knowledge from each other.

Headquartered in NYC, with offices in San Francisco and Paris, Mogul was the recipient of the Cadillac 'Innovator Award', 'Top Website for Marketing Your Company Online' by Forbes, 'Best Website for Finding Top Talent' by Inc. Magazine, 'Top Online Learning Platform' by Entrepreneur, and has been honored and recognized by Business Insider's '30 Under 30', ELLE Magazine's '30 Under 30', Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards, and Harvard Business School.

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MPOWERD: Innovative clean energy products

mpowerd
Seungah Jeong (CEO) and John Salzinger (cofounder, CBDO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Consumer Goods
Founded in 2012
20 employees
Funding undisclosed

MPOWERD is a growing NYC-based B Corporation that works to help people fit clean energy into their daily lives. In 2012, they created the inflatable solar Luci light — a sleek, sustainable and well-designed light that is completely powered by the sun and literally fits in the palm of your hand.

The lightweight, portable Luci lets you bring a little light wherever you need it, whether you’re adding a modern touch to your home, hitting the trails or traveling off grid. The company is driven by their mission to empower the lives of the 1.5 billion people living without electricity in low-income countries — the more lights sold, the more lights they can deliver to people who need them at affordable prices.

With the help of 200+ NGO partners in over 90 countries, MPOWERD has sent clean, reliable solar light all over the world to places like Nepal, Uganda and Peru. That’s why they call Luci the little light that does BIG things.

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Namely: All-in-one HR technology

namely
Matt Straz (founder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Human Resources
Founded in 2012
340 employees
Funding $107.8M / 8 rounds

Namely is the first HR platform that employees actually love to use. It is powerful, easy-to-use technology that allows mid-sized companies to handle all of their HR, payroll, benefits and talent management in one place.

Coupled with dedicated support and benefits consulting, every Namely client gets the software and service they need to deliver great HR and a strong, engaged company culture. Namely is used by over 500 clients with over 100,000 employees globally. Headquartered in New York City, the company is funded by Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners, True Ventures, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Greenspring Associates, Vayner/RSE, Bullpen Capital, and others.

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Nanit: The Tesla of baby monitors

nani
Andrew Berman (cofounder, COO), Dr. Assaf Glazer (cofounder, CEO) and Tor Ivry (cofounder, CTO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Internet of Things
Founded in 2013
17 employees
Funding $6.6M / 1 round

Nanit is the first baby-safe smart monitor for the modern family that utilizes the most advanced and secure camera ever introduced to the home.

Co-founded by Dr. Assaf Glazer, Tor Ivry and Andrew Berman, Nanit was made by parents for parents who are curious about their child’s sleep habits and overall wellness. Nanit’s machine-learning technology and advanced camera sensors measure a baby’s sleep cycle and provide actionable insights that lead to better sleep for the baby — and the entire family.

Nanit is the only monitor on the market that provides sleep insights, behavioral analysis, parenting tips, social sharing capabilities and nightly video summaries — all without attaching a wearable device to the baby. All of these features help to achieve Nanit’s primary mission: to help babies, parents and families sleep better.

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Nestio: Powering the real estate industry

nestio
Caren Maio (cofounder, CEO) and Mike O'Toole (cofounder, CTO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Real Estate Technology
Founded in 2011
40 employees
Funding $11.92M / 4 Rounds

Caren Maio and Mike O’Toole started Nestio because they believed that renting apartments should be easy. They spent thousands of hours talking to key industry players to discover the root problem as to why the rental experience was so inefficient.

Rental listings were often wrong, missing information or outdated because the industry was relying on legacy technology. This resulted in a terrible experience and wasted time and money for everyone involved. In 2013, Caren and Mike built a product to change that, enabling everyone in the industry to manage and communicate information in real-time.

Nestio enables real estate professionals to manage inventory, track leads and deals, advertise listings and access performance analytics – all from one system. Today, Nestio employs over 40 people, has raised nearly $12 million in venture capital, and their SaaS platform is being utilized by some of the most well known real estate companies throughout the country.

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NowThis: Stories that move

nowthis
Tina Exarhos (CMO) and Athan Stephanopoulos (President). Saskia Uppenkamp

Distributed Media
Founded in 2012
125 employees
Funding undisclosed

NowThis is a world leader in mobile video content creation with over 2.4 billion monthly views across multiple digital platforms. The company operates over 30 content verticals on various social channels, delivering over 60 unique visual stories per day.

NowThis produces on demand video news, live broadcasts and original scripted programming customized for specific platforms and audiences. As well as being one of the most-watched video news publishers across the social web, NowThis has built a unique distribution model that provides news and current affairs coverage by millennials for millennials. 74% of its audience is under 34 years old, while 68% are between 18-34 years old, and it's a demographic that is eagerly consuming the kind of content that NowThis is creating.

NowThis was founded by digital media veterans Kenneth Lerer and Eric Hippeau.

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NS1: Precision control over internet traffic

ns1
Alex Vayl (cofounder, VP Business Development), Kris Beevers (cofounder, CEO) and Jonathan Sullivan (cofounder, SVP Operations). Saskia Uppenkamp

Cloud Services
Founded in 2013
35 employees
Funding $25.35M / 2 Rounds

NS1 was founded by a team of hardcore infrastructure geeks who – after having built global content delivery networks, public cloud platforms, infrastructure APIs, and even robots – decided that the DNS and traffic management space was ripe for innovation.

The idea behind NS1 is simple: DNS is ubiquitous and the ingress point for almost every website and application. That makes DNS an ideal place to make intelligent traffic management decisions to improve application performance, and enable the dynamic infrastructure common in today’s environments.

With its data-driven architecture and unique Filter Chain routing engine, their intelligent DNS and traffic management platform is purpose-built for the most demanding, mission-critical applications on the internet. NS1's comprehensive platform technology leverages infrastructure, application, and network data to make intelligent routing decisions in real time, ensuring optimal application performance and reliability.

The company's customers include Yelp, Imgur, MaxCDN, Collective Media and others.

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One Month: Building a better way to learn

one month
Mattan Griffel (cofounder, CEO) and Chris Castiglione (cofounder, Dean). Saskia Uppenkamp

Education
Founded in 2013
10 employees
Funding $2.55M / 1 round

Started in 2013 by Mattan Griffel and Chris Castiglione, One Month makes online courses that don't suck. Everybody wants to develop a website, but few people know how to get started.

At One Month you can learn the fundamentals of Ruby on Rails, Python, JavaScript, UX, HTML and Programming for Non-Programmers (for those of us that don't even know where to start!) all in less than 30 days. And the best part? Each class comes with live access and feedback from your teachers.

So when you get stuck (which we all do sometimes) you'll have someone by your side cheering you on. One Month has been quoted in the press as being "Harvard meets Netflix," which really says it all. With more than 50,000 students having graduated from One Month, now it's your turn! What if you could learn anything in One Month?

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OpenTrons Labworks: Making robots for biologists

opentrons
Will Canine (cofounder, CPO) and Chiu Chau (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Robotics
Founded in 2014
14 employees
Funding $2.3M / 1 round

Today, biologists spend too much time pipetting by hand. Very few scientists have access to experimental automation because current pipetting robots cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and require experts to program.

But OpenTrons makes robots biologists can easily afford and use. OpenTrons robots cost less than five-thousand dollars and let scientists download and run an experiment like an app on an iPhone. OpenTrons got its start at Haxlr8r, the hardware accelerator in Shenzhen, China, where they still make all their robots.

When they got back from China they launched on Kickstarter where they sold their first 30+ machines. One year later they were part of the W16 batch of Y Combinator, and are now backed by Khosla Ventures. Currently over 120 academic and industrial biotech labs around the world are using OpenTrons robots to automate experiments.

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Orchard Platform: Technology and infrastructure provider for marketplace lending

matt burton
Matt Burton (cofounder and CEO). Screenshot

FinTech
Founded in 2013
11 - 50 employees
Funding $44.7 M / 3 rounds

The platform provides products and services to investors that enable them to understand, access, and execute marketplace lending investments, including Market Data & Research, a powerful Order Management System, and detailed Reporting & Analytics.

Orchard’s mission is to build the systems and standardize the data that will allow marketplace lending to efficiently grow into a global financial market.

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Oscar

oscar
Sara Rowghani (VP of Marketing), Joel Klein (Chief Policy and Strategy Officer), Joshua Kushner (cofounder), Mario Schlosser (cofounder, CEO) and Charlotte Elkin (Behavioral Health Specialist). Saskia Uppenkamp

Healthcare
Founded in 2012
400 employees
Funding $727.5M in 8 Rounds

Healthcare is hard. Health insurance shouldn’t add to that. To address this, Oscar has completely reimagined the role of a health insurer: it won’t just sign you up and ditch you until it’s time to pay a bill.

Instead, Oscar makes your healthcare smart, simple, and painless. To do this, Oscar offers plans and benefits that people can understand, online tools that make accessing healthcare easy and intuitive, and tailored service for each of its members. Members can log in on their computer or via the Oscar app to search for a doctor, easily compare their options for care and even schedule appointments.

Or they can call their personal concierge team to help them manage their care needs, whether they’re dealing with a chronic condition or need to find urgent care near them. Oscar marries advanced technology and data analysis with meticulous and personal service, all to inform and empower each member to fully manage their health.

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Paribus: Get money back when prices drop

paribus
Karim Atiyeh (cofounder, CTO). Saskia Uppenkamp

E-commerce
Founded in 2014
12 employees
Funding $2.22M / 2 rounds

Paribus is based on a simple observation: stores are collecting more and more data with each passing day to drive up what consumers pay. Online retailers algorithmically alter the information customers see, influence their perceptions, and push them to pay more for less.

Founders Karim Atiyeh and Eric Glyman wanted to turn the tables and empower consumers by using advanced algorithms. When you are owed money, Paribus’ algorithms automatically get it for you by handling everything from instantly detecting purchases, monitoring and comparing price changes in real time, and automatically filing out claims to get you paid.

The team at Paribus believes that technology should work in the background for you rather than asking you to constantly interact with something to glean value from it. The roadmap includes reducing costs on any transaction, from travel and insurance to student loans and utility bills. Paribus was recently acquired by Capital One in October 2016. This presents new opportunities to both the startup and its users.

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PebblePost: Programmatic direct marketing using the world’s intent data

pebblepost
Tom Gibbons (cofounder, VP Product Experience and Design), Lewis Gersh (cofounder, CEO) and Rob Victor (cofounder, CTO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Marketing Technology
Founded in 2015
20 employees
Funding $8M / 2 rounds

PebblePost invented Programmatic Direct Mail® to transform real-time online activity into personalized, dynamically rendered direct mail that’s delivered into postal hubs within 12-24 hours, every day.

The company’s patent pending digital-to-direct mail platform delivers the world’s first real-time tools for the channel, including segmentation, campaign management, analytics and optimization. PebblePost combines the power of intent data with the effectiveness of in-home to achieve far higher response, conversion rates and ROAS. They are a venture-backed company based in NYC.

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Peloton: Using technology to revolutionize the fitness industry

peloton
Tom Cortese (cofounder, COO), Yony Feng (cofounder, CTO), Graham Stanton (cofounder, SVP Performance Marketing) and John Foley (cofounder, CEO). Christoph Lange

Fitness/Technology
Founded in 2012
300 employees
Funding $120M / 2 rounds

Founded in 2012, John Foley brought top talent together in the Silicon Valley headquarters to create a new concept in fitness. John and his wife Jill loved cycling but had a hard time finding a workout that consistently fit their schedules and at-home workouts never felt quite up to par.

So, John, along with co-founders Yony Feng, Tom Cortese and Graham Stanton set out to create Peloton: a world-class indoor cycling studio experience on your time, and in the comfort of your own home.

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Percolate: The system of record for marketing

percolate
Noah Brier (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

SaaS
Founded in 2011
250 employees
Funding $74.5M / 4 rounds

Percolate was built by marketers for marketers. In 2011, Noah Brier and James Gross founded Percolate to help brands grow in a world transformed by social and mobile technology. They wanted to do so with software that is beautiful and works the same way marketers work.

Today, Percolate’s all-­in­-one software platform helps marketers plan, create, and execute all their marketing. Over 800 brands including GE, Unilever, Mastercard, Marriott, Levi’s, Chobani, Lyft, and WeWork trust Percolate to manage their global marketing supply chains and help grow their business. Backed by Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and GGV, Percolate is one of the fastest growing companies in enterprise software.

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Persado: Cognitive content generation

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Alexios Vratskides (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Cognitive Computing
Founded in 2012
210 employees
Funding $66M / 3 rounds

Persado is a cognitive content platform generating communication that inspires action in any audience. Founded on 12/12/12, Persado has developed a groundbreaking cognitive computing platform (i.e. Narrow AI) to scale, elevate and ultimately transform content creation.

The platform uses advanced statistical algorithms and neural networks to analyze and understand human behavior, then predict what language and emotions compel a person to act. Fortune 500 brands use cognitive content to improve the customer experience. The likes of American Express, Citi, Staples, Microsoft, and Verizon have seen 49.5% average uplifts in conversions across marketing campaigns and more than one billion dollars in incremental revenue.

Persado's cognitive content is currently optimized for marketing, but the system has the potential to enhance any motivational communication, be it civic compliance, pharmaceutical adherence, personal fitness, or even online dating!

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Plated: Building the future of food

plated
Nick Taranto (cofounder, CSO), Elana Karp (cofounder, Chief Culinary Officer) and Josh Hix (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Food Tech
Founded in 2012
500 employees
Funding $80M / 4 Rounds

Plated envisions a world where healthy, delicious, affordable food is available for everyone. By using data and technology, the company empowers consumers nationwide to easily cook restaurant quality meals at home, personalized to their tastes.

Working with trusted partners who supply quality ingredients, Plated delivers everything that’s needed to create seasonal chef-designed recipes and dessert to its vast and loyal audience each week. Launched in 2012, Plated has revolutionized what it means to connect over a memorable meal at home.

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Playbuzz: Reinventing digital storytelling

playbuzz
Shaul Olmert (cofounder, CEO) and Tom Pachys (cofounder, CPO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Media Technology
Founded in 2012
122 employees
Funding $31M / 4 rounds

Playbuzz is a digital platform that empowers authors worldwide to create engaging content via a suite of interactive content formats.

The company enables publishers, brands and agencies to elevate their storytelling capabilities, maximize user engagement and utilize cutting-edge analytics tools to uncover content preferences of their users. Founded in 2012 by Shaul Olmert and Tom Pachys, Playbuzz has become one of Tel Aviv's most well-known startups.

After earning the title of being the #1 most shared site on Facebook, the company prioritized building a portfolio of the world's most notable publishers and brands. Today, partners include Unilever, The Huffington Post, MTV, Ford, The Telegraph, American Express and more. With three rounds of funding (the latest being led by Disney), over 10 formats and seven offices across the globe, the company is now focused on expansion into APAC and its sponsored content offering which delivers custom, interactive native advertising at scale.

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Poncho: Weather with personality

poncho
Kuan Huang (Founder), Sam Mandel (CEO) and Stephanie Chan (Head of Operations, Editorial). Saskia Uppenkamp

Media
Founded in 2013
13 employees
Funding undisclosed

Weather forecasts are a total snooze — unless your chief meowterologist is a cat who tells you the weather with a pop-culture twist. Poncho’s forecasts warn you about rain as well as bad hair days.

His forecasts are powered by custom-built analytics and content management tools, and the only thing sharper than Poncho’s cutting-edge tech is his wit. A fast-paced writers’ room is constantly updating the Poncho bot on Facebook Messenger so people can chat with him about everything from the election to guacamole recipes.

Since debuting as one of Messenger’s launch partners, the company has also launched rain alerts, severe weather alerts, and even outdoor activity forecasts. With new content offerings such as bite-sized weekly horoscopes and life advice, it’s no wonder Poncho is the most popular conversational bot today.

The core team at Poncho consists of Greg Leuch (Product, R&D), Kuan Huang (Founder), Sam Mandel (CEO) and Stephanie Chan (Head of Operations, Editorial) and is currently available on iOS, Android, and Facebook Messenger, but coming soon to many more chat platforms.

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RebelMouse: The platform for organic, social growth

rebelmouse
Paul Berry (founder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Social Media
Founded in 2012
80 employees
Funding $18.75M / 3 Rounds

The publishing industry is going through a massive shift toward social media. Distributing content simultaneously across social platforms is becoming increasingly difficult, and growing engagement with that content is even more challenging.

RebelMouse was founded in 2012 by Paul Berry, former CTO of The Huffington Post, with one goal: to build technology that enables companies to succeed in the world of distributed publishing. With that objective in mind, RebelMouse has created the first Distributed Content Management System (DCMS) for natively-social publishing, which allows companies to launch fully-distributed websites in a matter of days.

At the core of the platform are smart distribution tools that help increase organic reach on social media. Simply put, RebelMouse technology makes it easy to publish everywhere, find and grow relationships with social influencers, and connect content with its maximum audience.

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Reonomy: Connecting to real estate

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Rich Sarkis (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Commercial Real Estate Tech
Founded in 2013
26 employees
Funding $18M / 3 rounds

When it comes to commercial real estate data, Reonomy turns complex intelligence into an accessible idea. In an industry often based on probability rather than high-quality information, they provide innovative solutions that help CRE professionals navigate a multi-trillion-dollar marketplace, with simplicity and ease.

Since their founding in 2013, the focus has reached beyond technology and real estate to being interested in people. That’s why they’ve created a tool that empowers users to make faster, more informed decisions. The CEO, Rich Sarkis, will lead the company into a national product launch in 2017, a vision that aligns perfectly with their mission to connect everyone with real estate.

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Ringly: Jewelry meets technology

ringly
Christina d'Avignon (cofounder, CEO) and Logan Munro (cofounder). Saskia Uppenkamp

Wearables
Founded in 2013
15 employees
Funding $9M / 2 rounds

Maintain peace of mind and lead a more balanced and healthy lifestyle with Ringly, the world’s most stylish smart jewelry. Ringly helps women stay on top of their daily activity and notifications discreetly.

Their newest collection of rings and bracelets pair with a mobile app and tracks steps, distance, and calories burned. It allows the wearer to set health goals, view progress and earn Ringly rewards for success. The jewelry also receives mobile alerts, such as calls and texts, through different vibration and color patterns.

Whether it's at the dinner table, out with friends, or in an important meeting, Ringly will set your mind at ease and keep technology stylishly integrated into your life.

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Sidewalk Labs: Accelerating innovation in cities worldwide

daniel doctoroff
Daniel Doctoroff (founder). Scott Olson/Getty Images

Smart City
Founded in 2015
Employees undisclosed
Funding undisclosed

Sidewalk Labs is an Alphabet company that embraces the power of ubiquitous connectivity to improve urban life. Its team of urbanists and technologists work with cities to develop products and services that address big urban problems across transportation, housing, community services, data-driven management, and other areas.

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Smart Vision Labs: Disrupting traditional vision testing

realvisionlabs
Yaopeng Zhou (cofounder, CEO) and Marc Albanese (cofounder, COO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Digital Health
Founded in 2013
18 employees
Funding $8.1M / 2 rounds

Smart Vision Labs is making vision care less expensive, less complicated, and more accessible. The company offers a mobile-phone based eye exam where patients can obtain an eyewear prescription in minutes without the need for a doctor on-site.

Their proprietary technology shrinks expensive, bulky equipment to a portable device that is adapted to a telemedicine platform. The company partners with optical stores and other retailers to bring Smart Vision Exams to consumers.

Smart Vision Exams is currently available in 30 locations in New York and California, and the company is looking to expand to other states in the coming months. Founded in 2013, Smart Vision Labs aims to increase access to vision care by leveraging technology and innovation. Over 40,000 vision tests have been performed to date in 23 countries.

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SOLS: The future of footwear

SOLS
Geoff Kozma (VP Engineering), Kegan Schouwenburg (Founder, CEO) and Jeff Smith (COO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Mass Customization
Founded in 2013
12 employees
Funding $23.7M/ 4 rounds

Founded in July 2013, SOLS Systems is an early pioneer of mass customization in footwear. Operating at the intersection of technology and footwear, SOLS uses computer vision, digital manufacturing, and your smartphone to solve foot pain and shoe fit.

To date, SOLS has brought two successful products to market: SOLS Rx, an end-to-end solution for creating doctor prescribed custom orthotics using the SOLS Rx app, and ExoSOLS, a consumer focused custom insole, made convenient and affordable.

SOLS Systems is currently developing SIZERIGHT, a platform designed to help customers find the right shoe size when shopping online, preventing returns, improving conversion, and increasing satisfaction. SOLS Systems is dedicated to helping an analog, non-standard industry transform through technology. SOLS has raised more than $20mm in capital to date from investors including Lux Capital, Founders Fund, and Tenaya Capital.

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Sourcepoint: Creating compensation choice for publishers and consumers

sourcepoint
Benjamin Barokas (cofounder, CEO), Brian Kane (cofounder, COO), Geir Magnusson Jr. (cofounder, CTO), Jeroen Seghers (cofounder, CMO) and Maxwell Newbould (cofounder, VP of Engineering). Saskia Uppenkamp

Digital Content Compensation
Founded in 2015
23 employees
Funding $10M / 1 round

Sourcepoint is a content compensation platform that works with the world’s largest publishers to offer consumers a range of compensation choices to enjoy the content they love, aiming to create a more balanced and sustainable media ecosystem.

Sourcepoint’s technology enables publishers to engage in dialogue with their audience at scale about content compensation preferences. By doing so, publishers can offer their users a more customized experience, where consumers are agreeing to compensate the publisher for their content in a transparent and explicit way.

Founded in 2015, Sourcepoint is lead by CEO Ben Barokas and a founding team with 50+ years of collective experience catering to the unique needs of premium publishers. Investors include Foundry Group, Spark Capital, Greycroft and Accel Partners.

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Spoon University: The everyday food resource for young people

spoon university
Mackenzie Barth (cofounder, CEO) and Sarah Adler (cofounder, CTO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Digital Media
Founded in 2013
20 employees
Funding $2.5M / 1 round

Spoon University is an online food publication created for and by young people.

From simple recipes and cooking hacks to restaurant reviews and lifestyle tips — the digital magazine covers just about anything college students and post grads need to navigate their campuses and kitchens for the first time.

Spoon was founded in 2013 by two friends and undergraduates at Northwestern University, Mackenzie Barth and Sarah Adler. What started as a campus print magazine has evolved into a national online food publication with over 5,000 contributors across 166 college campuses worldwide. Their mission is to be a resource for college students and post grads to eat more intelligently and serve as a platform for young people to share their voice and passion for food.

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Starry: Changing internet connectivity for the better

Starry
Chet Kanojia (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Telecommunications
Founded in 2014
80 employees
Funding undisclosed

Starry believes the future of connectivity is wireless.

Because connecting people and things to high-speed, broadband internet should be simple, effortless and affordable, Starry (a Boston- and New York-based startup) is reimagining what it means to be an internet service provider by developing an ecosystem of products and services designed to simplify your connected life.

Starry is using high frequency spectrum to deliver ultra fast internet wirelessly to the home. In developing and building their entire technology stack, Starry is also rewriting the book on customer experience and in-home connectivity with its touchscreen Wi-Fi hub, Starry Station.

The innovatively designed Station (with accolades including Inc.’s Most Brilliant Product Designs of 2016) gives users at-a-glance updates on their home’s Wi-Fi health and device performance while proactively surfacing problems and potential fixes. Starry is all about better internet and better Wi-Fi for a more seamlessly connected life.

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Talkspace: Therapy on demand

talkspace
Roni Frank (cofounder,Head of Clinical Services). Saskia Uppenkamp

Digital Health
Founded in 2012
40 employees
Funding $28M / 3 rounds

Talkspace connects people with licensed therapists through its web and mobile apps. As the leading online therapy company, Talkspace revolutionized mental health care access by bringing the dialogue between therapists and their clients into the digital age.

Founded with a mission to eliminate the stigmas associated with mental illness and make therapy more available to millions of people, Talkspace's flagship product, Unlimited Messaging Therapy™, has already become the preferred method of treatment for more than 350,000 people.

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The Muse: The career site for millennials

the muse
Alex Cavoulacos (cofounder, COO) and Kathryn Minshew (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Human Resources
Founded in 2011
135 employees
Funding $28.7M / 4 rounds

Founded in 2011 by Kathryn Minshew and Alexandra Cavoulacos, The Muse delivers quality advice, skill-building resources, and personalized coaching services to over 50 million job seekers and ambitious professionals every year.

The Muse is the only online career resource that offers candidates a behind-the-scenes look at hundreds of companies across all industries and sizes to illuminate company culture — not just job descriptions. The Muse also works with employers to improve their employer branding, promote content and hire top talent, helping companies create authentic and lasting connections with candidates before they even apply.

Ultimately, The Muse’s mission is to become the most beloved and trusted career destination in the world, to the extent that every single person considering their next career move, or company considering talent solutions, thinks of The Muse.

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theSkimm: Making it easier to be smarter

theskimm
Danielle Weisberg (cofounder, co-CEO) and Carly Zakin (cofounder, co-CEO). Christoph Lange

Media
Founded in 2012
35 employees
Funding $16.3M / 3 rounds

Carly Zakin and Danielle Weisberg co-founded theSkimm from their couch in 2012. Drawing on the founders’ backgrounds as NBC News producers, theSkimm is reimagining the idea of morning television and changing the way female millennials receive news and information.

The company's inaugural product — The Daily Skimm — is the fastest growing email newsletter on the market, with an engaged community of well over 4 million active subscribers and an industry-crushing open rate. theSkimm's suite of products has grown with the launch of theSkimm for iPhone, which debuted as #1 in news and #9 overall in the Apple App Store.

theSkimm recently announced the launch of Skimm Studios, marking its upcoming expansion into video. Carly and Danielle have been named to the Forbes '30 Under 30 in Media', Vanity Fair's 'The Next Establishment', Adweek's 'Young Influentials', and Fortune's '40 Under 40'. They still prefer to work from a couch.

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THINX: Period-proof underwear

thinx
Miki Agrawal (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

E-commerce
Founded in 2014
30 employees
Funding undisclosed

THINX makes period-proof underwear for everyone, using innovation to change the culture, and the conversation, around menstruation.

Women find it uncomfortable to talk about it; it’s a huge taboo — and THINX is committed to breaking it. They want people to come in contact with their brand and immediately know that it's okay to be open and inquisitive, and to challenge the norms surrounding women's periods.

And they're really doing it, too; they've never seen more women openly discuss their hygiene regimens than now, on their own social media accounts, articles, and advertisements. It's really powerful, and motivating to see.

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TripleLift: Programmatic native advertising

triplelift
Eric Berry (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Ad Tech
Founded in 2012
130 employees
Funding $16.5M / 3 rounds

TripleLift makes native programmatic simple, scalable, and effective. Leveraging pioneering computer vision technology, TripleLift seamlessly transforms content like images and video into engaging in-feed native ads that match the unique look and feel of a publisher’s website.

Accessible via the industry’s first and largest real-time, native programmatic exchange, TripleLift helps marketers reach millions of consumers across any device, at scale. Since 2012, TripleLift has delivered meaningful results for some of the world’s biggest brands through what it calls the next evolution of display advertising.

TripleLift was named 2012 NYC and The New York Times Ad Tech Startup of the Year, joined the Forbes list of Most Promising Companies in America in 2015 and was named one of Crain's New York Business's Best Places to Work in NYC.

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TripleMint: The simplest way to find your home

triplemint
Philip Lang (cofounder, COO) and David Walker (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Real Estate
Founded in 2011
60 employees
Funding $7M / 3 rounds

TripleMint is the refreshingly simple way to buy, sell or rent a home. TripleMint combines technology, data and a select group of real estate experts to help buyers view more apartment options and to help sellers better price their homes.

Former Yale classmates David Walker and Phil Lang founded TripleMint in 2011 after having poor experiences finding apartments in NYC themselves. David and Phil believe that people should love the process of buying, selling and renting homes and that mission drives the culture at TripleMint. Clients have embraced TripleMint’s unique approach and the company has grown more than 100% every year.

TripleMint was founded in New York City, which is the largest real estate market in the US. They plan on expanding to every major US city and eventually internationally to transform the homebuying process.

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Twist Home: The simplest way to a brighter home

twist home
Shaun Springer (founder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Smart Home
Founded in 2014
9 employees
Funding $5.5M / 2 rounds

Twist Home was started with one goal in mind: to make the smart home simple.

Founded in 2014 by Shaun Springer, a former engineer of Crestron Electronics, Twist is a smart LED light bulb with an AirPlay speaker built in. The bulbs save space as well as energy, promote a healthy sleep cycle with time-sensitive adaptive lighting and offer easy and seamless user installation.

Twist has been named one of Interbrand’s 'Breakthrough Brands of 2016' and is progressing towards a full production launch. While this is their first product, the team plans to launch a full line of innovative devices that leverage the light socket’s power, creating the world’s simplest smart home platform.

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Upworthy: A mission-driven, video-first media company

upworthy
Eli Pariser (cofounder, co-CEO) and Peter Koechley (cofounder, co-CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Media
Founded in 2012
100 employees
Funding undisclosed

Lots of media companies have a mission. But Upworthy is on a mission to change what the world pays attention to.

They believe that stories about important issues can and should be great stories — stories for everyone, stories that connect us and sometimes even change the world. Founded in 2012 by Eli Pariser and Peter Koechley, Upworthy has since become the fastest-growing media company in the United States.

This year it has pivoted toward creating purposeful video stories that create empathy, change the way people see the world, and inspire them to share meaningful content. According to NewsWhip, people share Upworthy stories more often than those from the top 25 publishers. Upworthy works with brand partners to create and distribute content, and in July 2016 these videos received more than 330 million monthly views.

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Via: Smarter shared rides

via
Daniel Ramot (cofounder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Transportation
Founded in 2012
135 employees
Funding $137M / 3 rounds

Via is re-engineering public transit — from a regulated system of rigid routes and schedules to a fully dynamic, on-demand network. Via’s mobile app connects multiple passengers who are headed the same way, allowing riders to seamlessly share a premium vehicle.

Targeting the gap between outdated public transit and expensive luxury car services, the Via platform currently operates in New York City, Chicago, and Washington DC, has provided more than seven million rides, and is growing rapidly.

Founded in 2012 by Daniel Ramot and Oren Shoval, who previously led engineering projects for the Israeli Air Force and have PhDs in neuroscience and systems biology from Stanford University and the Weizmann Institute of Science, respectively, the idea for Via came from Israel, where many people rely on shared vehicles called sheruts to travel quickly, cheaply and easily along major streets.

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Vroom: Masterfully refurbished cars at no-haggle prices

vroom
Paul Hennessy (CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

E-commerce
Founded in 2013
550 employees
Funding $218.25M / 5 rounds

Vroom allows you to buy a pre-owned car online from anywhere in the U.S. with an exact, no-haggle price; free shipping nationwide; and a risk-free 7-day money back guarantee.

Vroom’s methodology for sourcing inventory is so advanced, based on decades of auto industry experience and leveraging huge amounts of data, that it is able to offer better prices and quality on a wider breadth of makes and models than elsewhere in the traditional industry.

Vroom offers only extremely high quality, pre-owned vehicles that have never been in an accident, extensively inspected and refurbished by the auto experts at Vroom’s Dallas and Houston facilities. Offering financing from more than 30 different lenders, Vroom bringing competition into the process for the first time and maximizing affordability. The company is based in New York, Dallas and Houston, also operating the Texas Direct Auto brand.

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Wheels Up: The most intelligent private aviation solution

wheels up
Kenny Dichter (founder, CEO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Private Aviation
Founded in 2013
156 employees
Funding $170M+ / 2 Rounds

Kenny Dichter’s vision for Wheels Up was to democratize the industry and expand the addressable market.

In three years, Dichter took Wheels Up from disruptive start-up to category leader, offering a total private aviation solution to its 3,000+ members. His mission is to continuously introduce innovative enhancements, providing members with the best and safest experience, positioning Wheels Up to be the largest private aviation company.

For a modest initiation fee, Wheels Up offers both family and corporate memberships with guaranteed hourly pricing on a “pay-as-you-fly” basis, with no hidden charges. Members have access to a private fleet of new Beechcraft King Air 350i and Citation Excel/XLS aircraft, all equipped with Wi-Fi and Gogo Text and Talk technology.

Wheels Up has created a niche in the marketplace with its unique offerings including Wheels Down, the ultimate lifestyle, events and concierge program, the Wheels Up App, Flight Desk, Shared Flights, Shuttles, Hot Flights and the WHEELS UP CARES charitable initiative.

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White Ops: Valiantly combating cybercriminals in the dark corners of the online advertising ecosystem

white ops
Michael Tiffany (cofounder, CEO), Eddie Schwartz (President, COO) and Tamer Hassan (cofounder, CTO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Cyber Security
Founded in 2012
60 employees
Funding $33M / 2 rounds

An underground world of organized cybercrime drives vast robot armies that elevate advertising fraud to billions of U.S. dollars every year. These hidden robots reside secretly on ordinary people’s home and work computers.

They command and control web browsers to fraudulently “view” online advertisements, unbeknownst to the computer’s owner. The masters of these evil bots use “cash out” websites to pocket the illicit revenue from these ill-gotten gains from advertisers. Launched in 2013, White Ops has built a talented team of white hat hackers to combat the cybercriminals and prevent fraud.

White Ops innovative technology verifies human interaction with Internet browsers and determines whether costly digital ads are viewed by people or by remote controlled robots. Billions of dollars are at stake, and both consumers and businesses are being hurt. White Ops is working hard to make the Internet safer and better for everyone.

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Wibbitz: A video for every story

wibbitz
Zohar Dayan (cofounder, CEO) and Yotam Cohen (cofounder, COO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Digital Media Tech
Founded in 2011
45 employees
Funding $10.8M / 3 rounds

Wibbitz is the leading automated video creation platform built for publishers. The platform uses advanced text-to-video technology to automatically produce premium branded videos from text articles in seconds.

Wibbitz’s platform enables publishers to minimize production time and create videos more efficiently, providing intuitive editing tools and licensed media from sources including Reuters and Getty Images. Wibbitz supports production for thousands of videos each day, allowing partners like AOL, Time Inc., Bonnier, and CBS to meet growing consumer demands for engaging videos on desktop, mobile, and social media.

Founded in 2011, Wibbitz has offices in New York City and Tel Aviv and is backed by Horizon Ventures, NantMobile, Initial Capital, lool Ventures, and Kima Ventures, among others. Wibbitz has been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, TechCrunch, and Mashable.

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x.ai: Democratizing the personal assistant

x.ai
Marcos Jimenez Belenguer (cofounder, Chief Data Scientist), Dennis R. Mortensen (cofounder, CEO), Matt Casey (cofounder, CTO) and Alex Poon (cofounder, COO). Saskia Uppenkamp

Productivity
Founded in 2014
70 employees
Funding $34.3M / 3 rounds

Founded in 2014 by Dennis R. Mortensen, Alex Poon, Matt Casey and Marcos Jimenez Belenguer, x.ai makes an AI-powered personal assistant who schedules meetings for you.

The interaction is as you would with any other person, but "Amy" takes care of all the 
tedious email ping pong that comes along with scheduling a meeting. x.ai are backed by blue chip investors, including IA Ventures, Firstmark, and Two Sigma Ventures, and are located in New York City.

They see themselves as a hardcore technology company developing invisible software, with the central mission being to build business sustainably through passionate and loyal customers—and every single team member, scientist or not, delivers exceptional customer service at all times.

Read the original article on The Hundert. Copyright 2016. Follow The Hundert on Twitter.
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