Apple, Facebook, Google, SpaceX - all these projects began as simple experiments - these ideas seemed simply crazy, but they still tried to bring them to life. Here are 20 more successful projects that their founders were involved in in addition to their main activities.
For many people, changing course is also a sign of weakness. This is the same as admitting that you don't know what you're doing. This seems especially strange to me. I believe that a person who cannot change his point of view is dangerous. Steve Jobs often changed his views depending on the situation, and I don’t know anyone who thought he was weak,” writes Ed Catmull in his book “Inc. How to manage a team creative people».
The founder of Apple (and 20 other people, whom we will talk about below) were not afraid to follow their ideas. Even Y Combinator, the most successful business incubator in the world, asks applicants to pitch their side project idea when they apply (and many are chosen to pursue their idea instead of the company's idea).
Product Hunt
Do you need technical knowledge to open a business in this field? What about a business that is dedicated to discovering new technical products? For Ryan Hoover, founder and CEO of ProductHunt, this has never been a problem. ProductHunt is a platform and community that helps people discover new tech products and interact with their team. Instead of agonizing over the technical aspects of his side project, he simply decided to do what he knew how:
“I wasn't an engineer, so I wasn't going to invest the time or money into building an entire website from scratch, but I could easily build an email list. So I did. Through the mailing list, I invited several hundred investors, founders and my friends who, in my opinion, might like my project and who had a nose for technical products.”
Within a few years of the startup's launch, ProductHunt had grown into a community with hundreds of thousands of users. AngelList recently acquired ProductHunt for $20 million.
Groupon
How did a social network for activists turn into a collective discount service that reaches 45 countries and is valued at $1 billion? And all this happened in just two years after launch. Groupon's path to success is a bit strange and winding. However, it defines the spirit of this startup.
The project was originally called The Point. The platform was aimed at uniting people around a specific action. One day, platform founder Eric Lefkofsky saw how users united large group to buy a product and get a discount. After this, the company began to develop as Groupon. The 2008 economic crisis prompted Lefkofsky to launch Groupon in Chicago, and we already know the rest.
Now almost everyone has it. Previously, Twitter was a small side project of Odeo. It was initially used as an SMS service for a small group of employees. The project did not seem interesting to the press and investors at the time, despite the support of CEO Evan Williams. Here's what TechCrunch wrote about him ten years ago:
“What is this company doing to make their offer attractive? How do their shareholders feel about side projects like Twttr when their main product is a complete bore? Only the design is good.”
Then they could not even imagine what the founders of Odeo built new business, which changed the way we communicate on the Internet.
Craigslist
Craigslist (the American analogue of Avito) is immortal. Let it not be included in the list of top tech companies, it is still worth saying a few words about the platform, which has been very successful in the American market for 20 years. But where and when did it all start? In the early 1990s, Craig Newmark, an IBM employee who had just moved to San Francisco, compiled an email list for local events (Craig's list, get it, right?). Craig thought the list would help him meet new people. The idea was picked up and the list became popular. People began to use it for more than just meetings. In the future, this inspired Craig, and he quit his job and began developing Craigslist. Today this company is worth $1 billion.
Unsplash
What do you do with the leftover photos after a landing page photo shoot? You create storage for royalty-free photos, of course. When Canadian startup Crew hired a professional photographer to take photos, they ended up with more photos than they needed. But instead of letting the photos get lost somewhere on the hard drive, the employees posted them on the website and gave them away for free. Then - one post on HackerNews, scattered throughout the Internet - and the photo was downloaded more than 50,000 times. Today, Unsplash has tens of thousands of amazing photos available for free download. Unsplash has become the place to go for free images.
AppSumo
You don't need a lot of money to create your side project. Check out AppSumo, the site for daily deals on digital goods and services. The site was launched for a small amount - $50. Noah Kagan, founder of AppSumo, shared in an interview the story of how he learned about the need to create a discount site for online companies. Back then he was doing marketing for mint.com. He put up his own money (plus $20 in cash his mom gave him) to create a landing page and collect email addresses. In the first year, the company's value reached $1 million.
Oculus
There are many stories about how famous companies started their journey in garages: Apple, Google, Amazon, HP. And Oculus. After a long day at California State University's Mixed Reality Lab (MXR), founder Palmer Luckey was heading to the garage to try to build the future of virtual reality. After one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns, Luckey quit his job, dropped out of school, and sold Oculus to Facebook for $2.4 billion, $400 million in real money, $2 billion in Facebook stock (before they even had a product).
Houzz
If you're looking for something related to home renovation or decor, you'll likely come across a listing on Houzz. The community serves more than 40 million monthly users and has approximately 1,000 employees worldwide. However, they started very modestly. One day, the founders of the company, the family of Adi Tatarko and Alon Cohen, were engaged in renovations and faced a lack of resources for home improvement. This inspired them to create their own. Their first users were twenty parents from the school where Adi and Alon’s children went, and several architects and designers. Today the company is worth $4 billion.
Khan Academy
While teaching his relatives, the founder of the educational platform Khan Academy, Salman Khan, received a slightly backhanded compliment: his students suggested that he meet online rather than in person. Khan did not ignore this remark, it just stuck in his head. So he started making ten-minute YouTube videos about various subjects, from biology to art. At the same time, he worked as a hedge fund analyst. When the Youtube activity began to gain momentum, Khan left his job and now has more than 100 employees under his leadership.
Gumroad
How do you know when you've come up with a killer idea for a side project? If you dropped out of college, somehow became the fourth employee at Pinterest, then quit your job to pursue this idea, this is definitely it. The same thing happened with Sahil Lavigna. While working as a designer at Pinterest, he realized that selling digital products online was unreasonably difficult. He tweeted his idea to get approval and then created his side project, Gumroad, over the weekend. Now the platform for selling digital products (from mailings to generating discount coupons) in the West is used by everyone - from Eminem to Tim Ferriss.
GitHub
“It all started with a domain, a cheap server from Slicehost, and some stock art.” Before GitHub became a $1 billion company, its founders Chris Vanstras and PJ Hiett built websites for the computer technology portal CNET. They didn't like the fact that it was so difficult to make changes to open source codes. So they created their own repository, working nights and weekends. Today, their side project has hundreds of millions in venture capital and approximately 20 million users.
WeWork
One of the most important startups in the world may not have appeared at all. Before founding WeWork, Adam Newman sold children's clothing with knee patches in a small building in Brooklyn. As Newman himself believes, at that time he “was mistaken and directed his energy in the wrong direction.”
As an additional income, Newman and his partner rented space in the same building for little money and opened a “green” coworking space there. With the proceeds from the sale of their stake in Green Desk (the original coworking company), they founded a new coworking space. Today it is worth $20 billion and is coming to Russia this year.
Udemy
How many happy IT consultants do you know? Most likely, in your circle there are either none at all, or they are all unhappy. When Gagan Biani wanted to leave the consulting company Accenture, he took up a side hustle - Udemy, where he was one of the founders. This is a platform where anyone can create and sell their online course. Today, perhaps, he is happy, because Udemy offers 42,000 courses and is worth more than $170 million.
Think about Slack, which created its own messaging app internally because nothing on the market was working for them. Or the founding family of Houzz, who started their network because they couldn't find the resources they needed to renovate. Whatever you choose, there will be several people who will think the same way as you. Don't give up on the side project idea just because you think you're the only one who needs it.
2. Listen to the market
When Twitch first started, the gaming community was never a priority. But when the founders saw that every day more and more more people broadcast their games, they realized: this is what people want. At the very beginning of Groupon, back then The Point, the goal was never to make money. He just wanted to unite for some social action. But once users banded together to get a discount on the product, Groupon's creators saw the full potential.
3. Don't be afraid to get your hands dirty
WeWork, Buffer, HubSpot, Imgur and Oculus - their founders weren't one hundred percent sure of what they were doing, but they took the risk anyway.
The truth is that you should just try - then any startup mistake can be prevented. Start small and see if your idea works. Create, for example, a landing page or a blog, send cold emails to 100 potential buyers and see if they like your idea. Side projects are a great way to test the waters before getting serious about your next idea.
4. Colleagues and partners can validate ideas as well as users
Startup founders are often advised to get their idea approved by real users. This is of course important. But when you're looking for ideas for side projects or just want to figure out if you're on the right track, it's also important to listen to opinions from the inside. Talk to your team, employees, or partners about the problems they are facing, even if those problems are not related to your company.
As a project management tool company, it is important for Planio to be even more productive and efficient. Therefore, they made it a rule to seek confirmation within the company before developing and releasing new features.
5. The moment is important
What's great about side projects is that there's usually no outside pressure. They can be launched at any convenient time. But this does not mean that you can just sit and wait for the “right moment.”
Side projects are a chance to explore the future. This is a chance to take advantage of modern tools to create applications and products that perhaps no one even knows about yet. Think about Instagram, which was created purely because of the hype around location-based services like Foursquare. Subsequently, Instagram became the most popular social network for sharing photos.
Or even Oculus. Taking advantage of advances in technology and people's imagination, they rebooted an entire industry. All this happened because the founders looked to the future. At the same time, they did not forget to follow the course of events. It was important for them to know that they were directing their energy to the right side project, and that it would not be wasted.
So what does this all mean?
Side projects are an incredible source of inspiration and a way to experiment. Often, the business ideas behind side projects are better and more interesting than your current occupation. Why not try it?
Startup- this is the name of both a company that is planned to be created and an existing enterprise in the development stage. Usually this is a project with an original idea that has not yet been brought to life.
Business angel- a private investor who often invests personal funds in risky projects.
"Writing in the Sand"
An online service that allows you to order a memorable inscription on the sand of any beach in the world as a gift.
Start-up capital: $100
The idea for a startup came to 23-year-old Anton Velikanov when he moved to Costa Rica. Financial investments were minimal. Anton completely developed the website in four days and wrote all the popular Russian names on his beach with his own hand. After a couple of months of working on the project, users had the opportunity to order confessions and wishes. Photographers were found who were ready to fulfill individual client requests. During the first year of operation, several joint campaigns were carried out with coupon sites, which brought recognition to the project. Also, the startup “Inscription on the Sand” was one of the first to receive a StartFellows grant.
"Social Alarm Clock"
A free service with which you can order a wake-up call for yourself or wake someone up yourself.
Start-up capital: $100 000
Hrachik Ajamyan, a student and owner of a small website development company, had a hard time forcing himself to get up in the morning. But when he received calls from unknown numbers, he immediately got up, thinking that it was a new client. This is how the idea emerged that calls from strangers are effective alarm clocks.
At the very beginning, the startup team consisted of five people. The development of the service was carried out almost 24 hours a day, the guys were so enthusiastic that they hardly slept. The starting capital was own funds teams. They were spent mainly on salaries of employees and on telecom. Not a single ruble was spent on advertising the startup. After it was decided to participate in the startup competition, the first business angel appeared. He invested $500,000 in the project.
"Each other"
This project helps to correctly realize other people's desires and find good performers theirs.
Start-up capital: $50 000
The authors of the original idea were four graduates of St. Petersburg State University. They decided that they would choose the desire of a particular person and fulfill it themselves. But then the idea was transformed: now users themselves make each other’s dreams come true. Before participating in the Startup Weekend, not a penny was invested in the project. Then the creators sent an application to the Glavstart company and received the first investments. In addition, this idea received a grant of $25,000 from StartFellows. The first version of the site took three months to develop and was not very successful. The second option was done in one and a half hours. A new version will be released soon: the startup involves constant improvements and moderation.
"Life Button"
Mobile system for calling help for the elderly, as well as for everyone who needs it.
Start-up capital: $10 000
Dmitry Yurchenko and Irina Linnik decided to start a mobile assistance system, invested money, and bought equipment. Then we found an investor and participated in startup competitions. Even without starting sales, they won the “BIT”, “Telecom Idea”, and “Business Success” competitions. The company faces many difficulties. The main one is sales, because many people do not know what a medical alarm is. Despite this, the creators plan to enter the regions and develop their own unique equipment.
Here are ideas from abroad:
Super Marmite, super-marmite.com, “Super-marmite.”
It's simple: you prepare a dish at home, post a photo of it on this site, set a price, indicate the address and wait for hungry customers.
HighScore House, highscorehouse.com - "Model House."
A chance to turn routine household chores into a game for children. Parents themselves determine what prize the child will receive for completing the task.
Never Liked It Anyway, neverlikeditanyway.com - “I didn’t like him anyway.”
Here you can sell some gift from your ex, and at the same time tell how bad this ex is, and get comments from sympathetic users.
What's new
If you have a startup or idea, you can:
Get advice or initial investment by participating in StartupWeekend, or contact the organizer - the Glavstart company - to receive a grant.
russia.startupweekend.org, glavstart.ru;
Participate in the BIT entrepreneurial competition, which is held almost throughout Russia.
bit-konkurs.ru;
Submit your startup to the Telecom Idea competition.
telecomideas.ru;
Get a startup grant from StartFellows.
milnerdurov.com;
Nominate a project from any field of activity for the “Best Startup” nomination in the “Business Success” competition.
opora-credit.ru/conference;
Take part in the Harvest work weekend and turn your idea into a startup.
greenfield-project.ru/harvest;
Nominate your company for the “Startups of the Year” nomination of the Runet Award.
premiaruneta.ru;
Fill out the form to participate in the “Technovation Cup” project competition.
technocup.ru.
Prepared by Anna Grineva
"The bubble hasn't burst yet"
This is how the list of the most interesting startups of 2015 according to Forbes begins. It includes those companies for which investors have the most hope and write the biggest checks. Among them there are such monsters as Uber and Udacity, as well as unique services for finding care for your dog and delivering food from nearby restaurants. In total, these 50 startups managed to attract $7 billion from investors, and they are collectively valued at $120 billion.
Check out the list and maybe you will decide to implement something similar in our country.
#1 Uptake Technologies. Valuation: $1.1 billion
A service that collects all information on its client’s business, processes it, systematizes it and provides it to the client in the form of simplified analytics. Based on it, the client can better understand the results of his work and better correct it.
#2 Slack. Valuation: $2.8 billionA service for organizing work processes, with its help you can easily communicate with colleagues and subordinates, assign tasks, monitor their implementation, and also synchronize the application with other work services.
#3 Porch. Estimate: $500 millionService for finding workers for apartment repairs and orders for repair work. The base consists of 3.2 million specialists and 132 million works performed by them on site. Plus, Porch insures each of its customers against poor quality work for $1,000.
#4 OfferUp. Estimate: $814 millionA simple and convenient bulletin board. Inside the application, you can communicate with buyers and sellers in chats, pay for purchases, and quickly post or update product photos.
#5 PicsArt. Estimate: $250 millionPhoto editing application. One of Instagram's competitors, the difference is that inside the application there are many more editing tools and a different approach to creating a feed and interaction between users.
#6 Casper. Estimate: $555 millionManufacturer and online retailer of innovative and comfortable mattresses, pillows and sheets. The target audience of the project is the young active urban population. Revenue to today has already amounted to $100 million.
#7 DoorDash. Estimate: $600 millionApplication for ordering food from the nearest restaurant.
#8 Expensify. Estimate: $147 millionService for tracking corporate budget expenses. With its help, you can easily track how and what budget funds are spent on and quickly and easily adjust expenses.
#9 Postmates. Estimate: $450 millionA food delivery service similar in organization to Uber. Couriers earn a percentage of delivered orders. A competent approach to customers and well-functioning logistics allows Postmates to earn $100 million a year.
#10 Zenefits. Valuation: $4.5 billionCloud software for personnel management. With the help of this cloud, HR departments can conduct their work from anywhere in the world. The cloud contains all the necessary information - salary slips, applicant profiles, reports on new employees and others. It is not known what will happen if the cloud is hacked.
#11 ClassPass. Estimate: $293 millionThe service offers, for a fixed fee, the opportunity to visit various sports groups and sections in your city, without the need to book time or arrange training sessions.
#12 Jibo. Estimate: $128 millionThe company has developed a robot buddy. Its main task is to communicate and help everyone who is at home, and Jibo will have a special approach to each family member. He will be able to tell children a fairy tale, parents an anecdote, and in the kitchen he will suggest a recipe or read out messages for a specific recipient.
#13 Whipclip. Estimate: $600 millionAn application that allows you to share TV shows and music videos with your friends for free and completely legally.
#14 Namely.Estimate: $181 millionCloud service for personnel management. Allows you to set goals, monitor implementation, reward employees, as well as pay salaries with automatic tax calculations and do all this through a web interface or a mobile application.
#15 DraftKings. Valuation: $1.2 billionA very popular trend in the United States is gambling, in which users can create football teams from existing players and predict how they will spend the playing season. The service grew rapidly and gained popularity, but literally at the end of the year, DraftKings and their main competitor were overtaken by lawsuits from the state with suspicion of fraudulent transactions and insider trading.
#16 Uber. Estimate: $64 billionAn international company specializing in calling and paying for a taxi or private driver using a mobile application. The service is available in 68 countries and 300 cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg and 5 other large Russian cities. Some governments of European countries prevented the spread of the service, considering it “the largest illegal carrier”; a similar situation was in Russia, but an agreement was signed limiting the company’s services only to legal carriers.
#17 Robinhood. Estimate: $275 millionAn application that allows you to trade stocks without commission. On this moment operates only in the USA and plans to enter the markets of other English-speaking countries in 2016.
#18 Greenhouse Software. Estimate: $245 millionA service that allows you to systematize and simplify the process of hiring employees. The creators promise to do all the hard work for you: the service will draw up a plan, help you place ads, schedule interviews, and even compile a list of questions to ask when talking with a candidate.
#19 Layer3 TV. Estimate: $385 millionNew generation cable provider in the USA. The company has brought together cable industry veterans, as well as many personnel from Google, Comcast and Apple. Layer3 TV plans to combine the usual cable TV and mobile applications. This is all that is known about the company’s plans for now; they are keeping the rest secret.
#20 Pronutria Biosciences. Estimate: $321 millionThe company aims to track the level of amino acids in your body, and also gives advice to level out the imbalance and thus improve your health.
#21 Tanium. Valuation: $3.7 billionTanium products help IT departments of companies establish fast and secure communications between hundreds of thousands of computers. The startup's investors include TPG, Institutional Venture Partners and T Rowe Price funds.
#22 Raise Marketplace.Estimate: $608 millionThe service allows you to buy and sell gift cards. It will be useful for those who want to save on purchases or turn their gift cards into real money.
#23 Beepi.Estimate: $564 millionBeepi is a service where you can buy a car checked by your own specialists for a fair price and have the option of returning it. If the seller’s car is not purchased through the site within 30 days, the company buys it for the agreed price and sells it itself. The price of a car is determined by the site commission, the seller’s expectations and the assessment of the company’s technical specialists.
#24 Corvus Pharmaceuticals. Estimate: $236 millionA pharmaceutical company developing drugs that support the immune system and help fight cancer.
#25 LendingHome. Estimate: $519 millionThe company is a platform for investors and people who want to get a mortgage loan. The former can easily start investing their money, and the latter can choose a profitable and convenient mortgage option for themselves.
#26 Affirm. Estimate: $576 millionA financial startup that offers users instant micro-loans at extremely competitive rates.
#27 Credit Karma. Valuation: $3.5 billionCredit Karma is a platform designed for users to obtain a credit rating, regardless of the person’s location. The service's audience is 40 million people. At this stage, the company provides reports, credit scores and some other financial tools.
#28 Menlo Security. Estimate: $127 millionMenlo Security develops an anti-malware solution. The total amount of funds raised by the startup has reached $35 million. The company plans to completely rid users of viruses and other malware using its Isolation Platform system.
#29 Carbon3D. Valuation: $1 billionCanadian startup specializing in 3D printing. A key advantage of Carbon3D is its CLIP printing technology, which allows you to print objects 25-100 times faster than other 3D printers. The products are of higher quality due to the continuous creation of the structure, rather than layer by layer.
#30 Afferent Pharmaceuticals. Estimate: $280 millionA pharmaceutical startup that develops innovative medicines.
#31 WeWork. Valuation: $10.2 billionThe startup operates in some major cities USA and offers freelancers, small teams and businesses a variety of different coworking spaces. The business model is extremely simple. WeWork rents several floors in office centers on favorable terms, renovates them, creates space for work, meetings and relaxation, and also installs all the necessary office equipment. And then they offer everyone who wants to buy subscriptions to work in such a coworking space.
#32 zSpace. Estimate: $160 millionzSpace offer users their own vision of virtual reality. Their workstations are computers whose displays track the movement of special glasses and a stylus-style controller, thereby creating a sense of three-dimensionality of the object.
#33 Premise Data. Estimate #375 millionThe company helps process a large number of data to understand economic effects in real time.
#34 Collective Health. Estimate: $391 millionCollective Health develops a corporate health insurance platform to help companies provide health benefits to employees.
#35 Rover. Estimate: $130 millionThe startup can be called Airbnb for dogs. Even the interface is similar. Owners can choose who will take care of their pet, and dog lovers will be able to sit with them and even earn money.
#36 Cohesity. Estimate: $336 millionThe startup is working towards renting secondary data storage. And this, according to Cohesity estimates, is up to 80% of the total data volume. The company will help you save up to 80% on storage costs.
#37 Udacity. Valuation: $1.1 billionUdacity is not a newcomer among startups, but a fairly well-known platform for self-paced remote education, which was born as an extension of Stanford University.
#38 Placester. Estimate: $150 millionThe company is designed to make life easier for American realtors by uniting great amount real estate databases (more than 900 in the USA) into one, with a convenient interface, search algorithm and support on mobile devices.
The company provides services for storing databases on “elastic” servers. They can expand if necessary, as well as “give away” space that is not currently being used.
#42 Cyanogen. Estimate: $640 millionAlmost any Android lover can talk for hours about this operating system, but if you are not one of them, then in a nutshell Cyanogen is an OS that takes its roots from the same Android, but in many ways surpasses it.
#43 Handy. Estimate: $360 millionHandy offers to take on the troubles of cleaning the premises. The company selects people who want to earn extra money from such a difficult business, surveys them, and then offers their services to clients. Sort of like the Uber of the cleaning world.
#44 Onshape. Estimate: $800 millionCloud platform for CAD modeling. All work is done through a browser, synchronized with the overall project via the cloud and has a mobile interface.
#45 Illumio. Valuation: $1 billionIllumio specializes in cyber security, and while most competitors deal with threats outside the “perimeter,” Illumio deals with intruders who have passed the initial protection.
#46 Vroom. Estimate: $218 millionThe startup sells used cars in the United States.
#47 Nurix. Estimate: $227 millionThe company researches and develops drugs that affect the mechanics of protein regulation in cells. This approach will help fight many diseases, including oncology.
#48 Gusto. Estimate: $560 millionThe company is developing cloud-based personnel management. Allows you to pay employees, make tax deductions and much more.
#49 Betterment. Estimate: $431 millionThe startup is intended for people who want to start investing, but do not have much experience in this field.
#50 Theranos. Valuation: $9 billionA revolutionary method for quickly and accurately conducting tests using tiny doses of biomaterial. In 2015, the media questioned the accuracy of the test results and accused the developers of deceiving investors. So far, only the media have paid attention to this, so in the future, either the storm will subside and the project will continue to work, or everyone will really be disappointed in it and Theranos will have to close.
This is what the 50 hottest US startups look like. After reading about them in a little more detail, you can understand the direction in which our society is moving and what we will be able to see in the near future in the services market.
These startups may only be a couple of months old, but they have already changed modern technology. Business Insider magazine compiled a list best startups 2015, taking into account factors such as financing, profitability, growth and investor interest. The list includes startups that quietly appeared on the market or were presented to the public only this year. We have selected 20 of the most interesting ones.
Hungryroot
turns vegetables into bright and tasty paste (the kind that is pasta)
Former Groupon CEO Ben McKean created a startup called Hungryroot to turn vegetables into amazing pasta dishes. When you order from Hungryroot, you receive a ready-to-eat packaged meal the next day that is 70-80% veggies and 20% protein. The main ingredient is vegetable noodles from
Periscope
an application for broadcasting online video, purchased by Twitter even before its official launch
The League
dating app for the elite
Financing:$2.1 million in seed round from Jon Vlassopulos, IDG Ventures USA, Roman Feola, Naomi Gleit, Cowboy Ventures, XSeed Capital, Peter Kelly, Russ Siegelman, Mark Leslie, Allen DeBevoise, SherpaVentures, Structure Capital.
Gogoro
creates motorcycles in style
Gogoro launched just this year, although they have been operating in stealth mode since 2011. The company debuted a smart, plug-in electric scooter at the consumer electronics show. According to the company, the motorcycle is charged using a portable battery that is replaced at Gogoro stations in major cities. The Gogoro motorcycle is ideal for daily trips to work outside the city and back, as well as for short trips. It accelerates to 96 km per hour and travels up to 160 km without recharging. The Gogopro system connects to the cloud service via cellular communication and, using an application on a smartphone, diagnoses the condition of the motorcycle.
Financing:$300 million; Investors include Dr. Yin and Cher Wang of HTC.
Ride
a cheap, easy and environmentally friendly way to commute to work
Oscar Salazar, CTO and his third co-founder along with Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick, launched Ride earlier this year to make the daily commute less of a hassle. Ride is mainly focused on out-of-town travel and car sharing. It also makes it possible to travel where there is no public transport. The service helps you find travel companions among employees of the same company. Thanks to a shared ride, employees with their own cars give their colleagues a lift to their place of work and at the same time save money on gasoline.
Financing: unknown
Honor
service for finding qualified home caregivers for the elderly
Honor matches older people with home-based caregivers who care for them, while family members can monitor the work of specialists and have peace of mind about the health of their parents or grandparents. Unlike on-demand services like Uber and , which give people instant access to work, Honor wants professional caregivers with a minimum wage of $15 an hour to build long-lasting relationships with clients. Honor teaches them to be prepared for other people's expectations and matches them with older people to work with. For example, an old man who speaks Mandarin can find a caregiver who also speaks Mandarin.
Financing:$20 million from Kevin Colleran, Slow Ventures, Homebrew, Jessica Alba, Jeremy Stoppelman, Max Levchin, Kapor Capital, Andreessen Horowitz.
Eero
solves Wi-Fi problems
There's nothing worse than an intermittent Wi-Fi signal. This is exactly the problem Eero is trying to solve. Eero devices are small white boxes that use Bluetooth and mixed traffic to connect and share Wi-Fi in your home. According to Eero, a home typically requires three devices. The first one is connected to the modem, and the others are plugged into the outlet. Gadgets connect to each other via an internal radio network. Eero devices are available for pre-order now: one costs $199, and three cost $499. They will go on sale worldwide in February 2016.
Financing: Eero has raised over $40 million from AME Cloud Ventures, Initialized Capital, Great Oaks Venture Capital, Homebrew, Menlo Ventures, First Round, Playground Global, Redpoint Ventures and Shasta Venture.
Even
offers people loans to last until payday
Even is a smartphone app that helps professionals with variable income sources or low salaries survive payday to payday. While most Silicon Valley tech startups target the wealthy, Even is designed for people with bad credit or hourly workers with unpredictable schedules. The app provides credit to help you get through tough, cash-strapped weeks. They pay a fixed amount rather than a percentage. Even works with users' bank account: for $5 a week, users receive a steady paycheck with the same amount of money each week, even if they worked fewer hours one week and more hours the next. Users can save money with urgent spending and automatic budget planning features. The application has a pause button: it automatically blocks payments if the user is facing financial difficulties.
Financing:$1.5 million from Andrew Courtin, Joe Ziemer, Red Swan Ventures, Slow Ventures, Sam Lessin, Adam Rothenberg, David Tisch, L. Michelle Wilson, Mike Kreiger, Kevin Systrom, Homebrew, Keith Rabois.
Jet.com
a sensational eCommerce startup competing with
Former Quidsi executive Marc Lore has been working on a secretive e-commerce startup poised to take on Amazon. This year, Jet.com launched in beta with money from investors from Chinese online retail giant Alibaba, using 10,000 “insiders.” The site promises to provide products at prices 10-15% lower than anywhere else, including Amazon. Jet initially asked users to pay a $50 fee for membership, but dropped it in October.
Financing:$225 million from David Spector, Primary Venture Partners, MentorTech Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, Accel Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Silicon Valley Bank, Western Technology Investment, Citi Ventures, Thrive Capital, Temasek Holdings, Norwest Venture Partners, Google Ventures, Goldman Sachs , General Catalyst Partners, Coatue Management, Alibaba.
Meerkat
The live streaming app that people at SXSW were crazy about this year
Financing:$18.2 million from Raine Ventures, CAA Ventures, Vayner/RSE, WME, Chad Hurley, David Tisch, Ooga Labs, Aleph, Entree Capital, DreamIt Ventures, Gigi Levy, Ron Gura, Eyal Gura, PLUS Ventures, Jared Leto, Universal Music Group, Broadway Video Ventures, Comcast Ventures, SherpaShare, Vaizra Investments, Slow Ventures, Kevin Colleran, Soma Capital, Greylock Partners.
"21"
secret startup that mines bitcoins using your phone
21 is a Bitcoin startup that has been operating in secret all this time, and recently announced its plans to release a product in the form of an embedded chip called the BitShare chip, which will allow you to “mine” Bitcoins using your phone. These bitcoins can be used to pay for small services that you use. By collecting bitcoins, you can create a whole stream of cryptocurrency through constantly confirmed transactions. The application of the new product "21" in the field of Internet of Things, e-commerce and micropayments can be a very significant development. In a blog post, the company explained: “Instead of paying a bunch of different bills, you can connect BitShare to your appropriately sized smartphone and cover all or part of your cloud costs.”
Financing:$121.1 million from Winklevoss Capital, Pantera Capital, Peter Thiel, Qualcomm Ventures, Data Collective, Khosla Ventures, Yuan Capital, RRE Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz
Convoy
Uber for freight transport
Even as Uber looks to become the logistics network of the world, one startup is already making inroads into an industry that Uber hasn't yet taken over: trucking. The Seattle-based startup matches exporters with trucks without intermediaries and finds the right vehicle based on the type of cargo, volume, necessary equipment and prices. The startup focuses on local and regional transportation, providing truck drivers with the opportunity to earn more money, but still be home for dinner. Sounds a lot like Uber, right?
Financing:$2.5 from Amazon founder, Marc Benioff of Salesforce, Drew Houston of , founder Pierre Omidyar, former Starbucks president Howard Behar.
Diamond Foundry
grow diamonds. Exactly
Officially launched in November, the startup says it can grow hundreds of diamonds that reach up to nine carats in just two weeks in the lab. It took the company three years of work to come up with a way to grow pure, non-synthetic diamonds in the laboratory. The company claims to have discovered a plasma that allows atoms to attach to a thin piece of diamond extracted from the Earth. The atoms then accumulate on top of the real diamond, layer by layer, until a pure and precious diamond is formed.
Financing: less than $100 million Diamond Foundry has closed three rounds of funding from individual angel investors, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Evan Williams, Mark Pincius, Alison Pincius, Andreas Bechtolsheim, Andrew McCollum, Owen van Natt, Marc Bennioff, Marc Goldstein, David Spector, Jeff Skoll, Scott Banister, Vast Ventures, Caspian VC Partners and many others.
Nebia
shower of the future
Funded by Tim Cook and hundreds of friends on Kickstarter before the product even hit store shelves, the Nebia shower was a real find in Silicon Valley. The startup launched on Y Combinator's pitch day in August and raised more than $3 million on Kickstarter, placing it among the top 20 most funded projects. The shower saves water by atomizing the water under pressure, creating more steam and distributing it over a larger area.
Financing: over $3 million from Kickstarter backers
Gigster
allows professional programmers to work from wherever and whenever they want
The startup was launched only this summer, after spending two years of work on it. He selects a team of application and software developers for the relevant company. The client writes in clear English the essence of the desired business application. Gigster then analyzes the request, selects the best team for the job, including programmers, product managers and designers, and gives you a standard quote with a guaranteed price.
Financing:$10 million in Series A.
With Color Genomics
Breast and ovarian cancer testing becomes simple and accessible
Founded by Twitter veterans, Color Genomics offers genetic testing for $249 for potentially dangerous cancer genes BRCA1 and BRCA2. The company has already taken advantage of its startup community connections. For example, Visa sponsored the project 50-100%, providing testing to its employees.
Financing:$30 million
Wrapify
pays for advertising on your car
Think Uber for advertising, but without the passenger deals. Wrapify turns cars into mobile advertising and allows their owners to get paid for it. Advertisers pay to have a company logo placed on a car, and the Wrapify app tracks the distance they travel. The San Diego-based startup has already launched campaigns with advertising firms TriNet and Petco.
Financing:
Beeswax
offers companies a new way to buy advertising
In July, three former Google employees launched a new advertising IT startup. Beeswax offers the first bidder-as-a-service solution, allowing brand creators, agencies and ad networks to manage their auction bids using the cloud. The technology conducts automatic bidding for the purchase of advertising space on the Internet before the web page loads. The service reduces the costs and user time that are usually required for this.
Financing: Unknown. Investors include RRE, Revel Partners, Highland Capital, and SV Angel. The angel investors include a host of big names from tech advertising veterans, including former DoubleClick CEO David Rosenblatt, LiveRamp CEO Oren Hoffman, MediaMath CEO Joe Zawadsk, and former MoPub CEO Jim Payne.
Sourcepoint
is going to fight ad blocking
Sourcepoint wants to make ad blocking less of a threat to the online advertising industry. The company gives the web publisher the right to decide what message will be displayed on the site for visitors with ad blockers installed. The advertiser can choose several options: bypass the ad blocker and still show the advertisement, turn on a banner for the visitor with the words “by viewing advertising, you are paying for our content, so do not disable it,” or allow the user to choose how to view the advertisement (see three banners for three reads history, for example). The site may also request paid subscription to content.
Financing:$10 million Investors include Spark Capital, Foundry Group, Greycroft and Accel Partners Europe, as well as a number of advertising and IT executives: Millennial Media's Michael Barrett, Mediamath's Joe Zawadzki, Moat director Jonah Goodhart and LiveIntent CEO Matt Kaiser .
Cohesity
a startup that discovered a new way to store information in companies
Cohesity, one of the lavishly funded startups with a $70 million investment from top Silicon Valley venture capital firms, quietly launched this June. The startup intends to change the view on “secondary storage” of all files and backup systems that are not needed by enterprise systems in daily work, but are extremely important when they are needed. A startup founder can crack the code on this process. Executive Director Cohesity Mohit Aron is a former Google employee and co-founder of the $2 billion-funded startup Nutanix.
Financing:$70 million Sequoia, ARTIS Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Accel Partners, Battery Ventures, Google Ventures, and Trinity Ventures
Look out for our list of the best Russian startups of 2015 this week.
The best startups in Russia include:
Popular educational online service, which helps everyone who wants to master the English language or improve their existing level. Now more than 14 million people around the world use it. Each new “student” can take a test and choose the level they need, receive a set of exercises and educational materials for mastering it. The application allows you to train understanding not only writing, but also its auditory perception. Training materials are provided in both audio and video formats.
This is an educational platform with game elements that provides the opportunity to learn linguistic skills from native speakers.
The animated lion mascot gave the service its name - Leo. The idea to use this particular character, lost in the jungle of knowledge, came to the developers on the exotic island of Koh Chang, where the founder and a team of programmers worked for about six months to create a new service. Five years later, the founder, Ainur Abdulnasyrov, entered the top hundred Russian millionaires.
Google included LinguaLeo in its list of the best Android apps in 2015.
LinguaLeo - learning English can be funDoctor at work
The virtual community of professional doctors is a startup by Andrey Perfilyev and Stanislav Sazhin, which appeared in 2009. They created a space that most closely resembles a closed club, within which people of the same specialty can exchange experiences, get the necessary information, ask colleagues questions, and find a job.
Gradually, with growing popularity, the network expanded significantly. Now both medical students and pharmacists can use it. They, like doctors, got the opportunity not only to communicate, but also to improve their skills for free.
Half of all medical workers Russia, from higher education, are its registered users. In terms of participant activity, Doctor at Work ranks first in the world. For several years in a row, the project has occupied more and more honorable places in the ranking of the best startups in Russia - Russian Startup Rating.
Most doctors in Russia use their own social network “Doctor at Work”
MoneyMan comes to the rescue very quickly when it comes to micro-loans
Who hasn't dreamed of a flash drive with unlimited capacity? Alexey Churkin, founder of the Flashsafe startup, was able to solve this problem. It was he who came up with the idea of a “dimensionless” drive - a flash card connected to a cloud file storage system. Through special electronic devices, information is placed in storage and is located there absolutely anonymously, without being tied to a specific user. This makes it possible to obtain the necessary files without necessarily using passwords or keys. Such a device cannot be hacked; it guarantees complete security and confidentiality of information.
Alexey raised it with his own funds and grants, successfully presented his project in Skolkovo, after which 1.5 million rubles were collected in pre-orders. Gradually, investors were found, and the project repeatedly appeared on crowdfunding platforms. On August 30, 2016, sales of the “endless” drive started.
Flashsafe combines flash drive and infinity
The fastest startup, which became the best startup project in just a few days, is among the best startups of 2016 in Russia. The creators were forced to artificially restrain the powerful growth in the popularity of the project. is a mobile application that appeared quite recently, in the summer of 2016, and allows the user to turn any photo into an image made in the style of famous artists. It became possible to turn an ordinary frame into a work of art in just a couple of seconds and clicks. His success was simply dizzying. In 10 days, the new photo editor became the most downloaded product.
Investors valued the entire project at more than $10 million. The founder of the service, Alexey Moiseenkov, has become no less popular than his brainchild and tries “not to give more than one interview a day.” In them, he says that about two months were spent working on the mega-popular application and the investments were made “within the framework of salaries.” Now Mail.ru has already become an investor in Prisma, which allows us to evaluate the success and prospects of the project.
With Prisma, anyone can become a great artist
MULTICUBE
A Russian project that won the Startup Village competition in the summer of 2016. The startup ran a successful crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo and successfully presented itself at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York in 2016. Mikhail Bukhovtsev is the founder and CEO of Multikubik.
The project is an interesting technical novelty for the youngest users. We are talking about mini-projectors in the shape of a cube, with cartoons and filmstrips inside. You can project an image onto any flat surface. The creators claim that this is a “healthier” alternative to a child watching entertainment content on a tablet, the best option for quality family leisure.
Participant of the Skolkovo and API Moscow platforms. More than $105 thousand was raised to launch sales. Currently, the company's management is planning to develop a premium version of the projector; a more budget version will be launched into production very soon.
Multicube - a classic in new packaging
This is a list. Some of them are already known abroad, have found investors there and are planning to enter the international market. What can we say about the current situation in this area on a global scale? What are the best startups in the world?
10 best startups in the world
The best startup projects around the world include:
Slack
A popular corporate messenger that appeared in 2013. It provides very great opportunities for online teamwork; it is especially suitable for small and medium-sized companies. Slack makes official email correspondence between employees and complex internal document flow unnecessary. This service was ideal for communication between employees at work, but it also made it possible to create communities of interest, business or leisure. That is why another opportunity to use Slack is to search for the right specialists; HR workers actively use this.
The fastest growing business application in history, now valued at nearly $3 billion.
The application was created by Cambridge Philosophy graduate Stuart Butterfield. Over seven rounds of investment, his startup was able to raise about $350 million and become one of the best such projects in the world. It is especially popular in the USA and European countries. On the first day of testing, more than 8 thousand organizations registered in the Slack system.
More than a million users have already appreciated the benefits of Slack
Uber
One of the most famous and scandalous startups in the world, which indignant competitors regularly try to catch up with and are desperately trying to somehow cope with its expansion. At the same time, the project is very successful; investors value it at $64 billion.
The idea of linking a taxi order to a mobile application turned out to be simply golden. It belongs to Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp. The idea was born to one of the founders in Paris, when he could not get a taxi.
Having appeared in 2009, Uber brought huge profits to its creators. The world's leading venture financiers fought for the right to invest money in the service. This is understandable, since the company’s daily revenue now amounts to several million.
Now mobile taxis under this brand operate in more than 80 cities around the world, the number of trips using Uber in America has grown by 250%. The company continues to actively explore the global market and expand.
Uber is one of the best startups in the world in recent years
Zenefits was founded in 2013 by entrepreneur Parker Conrad, who until recently served as its CEO. Over the course of a year, the project went from an unknown startup to a dynamically developing business. It took him less than two years to become a company with a capitalization of more than $1 billion. Zenefits boasts some of Silicon Valley's biggest names (like Andreessen Horowitz) and is valued at $4.5 billion.
The project offers innovative software for HR departments of enterprises, which significantly simplifies personnel management and document management in companies. The service allows you to automatically calculate employee salaries, calculate benefits, bonuses, labor productivity factors, and determine vacation dates.
In February 2016, Zenefits changed its director, David Sachs, who took emergency measures to maintain the high assessment of the project by investors. Despite the fact that the company is now experiencing some difficulties, the number of its clients still numbers 20 thousand people.
Zenefits - a fundamentally new approach to work in the field of personnel management
Porch
One of the best startups in the world, which appeared in Seattle in 2013. The project was created to connect professionals who can perform home or appliance repair work with people who need their services. A user-friendly interface and ordering system allows you to find the right specialist very quickly, which was immediately appreciated by numerous Porch users. During its existence, the company managed to raise $99 million in 3 rounds of financing.
Porch is:
- 3 million professionals with work experience and reviews
- 140 million completed transactions
- over $100 million in venture capital
The company gives all clients a guarantee of $1000 if the quality of the work performed does not satisfy the customer.
The founders of Porch claim that their business continues to grow and develop, has excellent prospects and big plans for the future.
Porch - repairs are best left to professionals
A new type of social Internet service founded by Ben Silberman in 2008. With its help, each user can create their own unique virtual “boards” on which they collect and store images grouped by various topics. Very quickly, Pinterest has become a worldwide catalog of ideas and inspiration for a very large global audience of creative people and ordinary users. The project is especially popular among women. For example, brides looking for a wedding style or young mothers organizing photo shoots for their babies. Of course, all specialists in the artistic field also appreciated it.
It took this startup less than a year to attract its first 10 thousand users. Zilberman says that he personally drafted and sent invitation letters to the first 5 thousand. This figure now represents 70 million per month in the US and 150 million worldwide. The project has now surpassed Twitter in terms of audience size. Financially, it is also very prosperous, having attracted $1.3 billion in investments since its founding.
Pinterest - you can't have too many beautiful photos
An incredibly successful online service offering mattresses and other sleep accessories. A practical and serious approach to even the most ordinary household items, it turns out, can bring creators both money and fame. The manufacturer and seller of unusual sleep accessories was able to attract the attention of buyers and investors, the latter valuing the project at $550 million.
The authors of this startup approached the matter with a scientific approach and organized a real laboratory in which they experimentally established the parameters and characteristics of an ideal mattress. Now they sell only one type of it, but in different sizes.
Pleasant bonuses that successfully complement the high quality of Casper:
- Fast shipping
- compact packaging
- possibility of testing and returning goods
At the same time, the cost of a standard size mattress starts at $500, but the company provides a 10-year guarantee on it. The project successfully withstands competition, although the price of their goods is approximately twice the average.
This startup relied on comfort
It turns out that startups also exist in the field of space technology. One of the most successful projects in this area belongs to to CEO Tesla to Elon Musk, who decided to create the first private transport company for space cargo transportation. In particular, the creator saw the immediate goal of delivering cargo to Mars during its colonization. The project turned out to be successful and now the company is a real space concern.
The first steps in implementing this grandiose plan began in 2002, and 8 years later SpaceX became the first private company to launch a spacecraft. In 2012, one of its unmanned rockets docked with the International Space Station. After this, management signed a contract with the US Air Force and NASA.
SpaceX is considered the most progressive and promising space carrier, while offering some of the most low prices in the market for similar services.
The path from idea to successful space production
The third most valuable startup in the world is a mobile application that allows you to send messages with attached photos and videos. Created by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy and Frank Brown.
According to statistics, 200 million users of the application send 700 million messages daily. In general, during its existence, the company has raised more than $1 billion and continues to actively develop.
The head of the company, Evan Spiegel, is trying to make Snapchat a competitor to Facebook and Twitter. Most likely, he will succeed. An ambitious entrepreneur from the “golden youth” is confidently moving forward. The application content continues to be updated and improved, gradually adding new features.
Rapid growth, thoughtful, bold marketing and an audience under 30 are the key to Snapchat's success, which has allowed the company to become the third most capitalized startup in the world.
Evan Spiegel is the founder of Snapchat
Jibo
The creators of the first family robot, led by MIT professor Cynthia Breazeale, raised money for it using a crowdfunding platform. The project was so successful that in just a few days about 900 thousand dollars were received, although 100 thousand were required.
Now you can purchase an electronic friend for all family members and receive from him not only practical help in the form of necessary information, but also a couple of funny stories or anecdotes.
Jibo recognizes people and finds its own approach to everyone. He cannot move, but he can speak and show emotions. The first samples have already gone on sale. The creators of Jibo do not stop there; the design of the robot has already been improved with the investments that the project was able to attract.
Jibo - home robot has become a reality
One of the fastest growing internet startups of 2015, born in San Francisco.
The project was created as an online service for delivering food to private customers from nearby stores. The buyer selects all the necessary goods online from the lists of local supermarkets uploaded to the site, and receives his order by courier very quickly, within an hour.
Instacart is already available in several major US cities and continues to capture the market, and the company's revenue has increased 15 times. The startup is developing rapidly, funds and private investors are confident in Instacart's success, although competition is growing noticeably every year. The project with enviable consistency attracts more and more hundreds of millions of dollars of investment (see Investments in startups: attraction, rules, important points). Total funding for the service over two years is about $150 million. The successful startup's investors include Sequoia, Khosla Ventures, Canaan Partners, Horowitz and many others.
Even going to the store can make you rich
Among the best startups in Russia and around the world are the most various projects. Some of them are created by one enthusiast, while others are developed by several thousand different specialists. Sometimes it takes a month or two from the idea to the finished product, and sometimes it takes years. Each project has own secret popularity and its own fascinating story of rise.