Amitree and Biome Makers, AtScale and EdCast … Silicon Valley has a new generation of entrepreneurs and technologies
February 13, 2020
It might seem like Silicon Valley has settled into a middle age rhythm – Apple and Airbnb, Facebook and Google, Uber and Yahoo. Many of them visibly struggling with those all-too familiar signs of middle age – the effects of too much success, gaining weight and slowing down, iterating not innovating, less hungry and more predictable than in their early days.
I remember back in the 1990s working long hours with some of the most amazing software engineers in Silicon Valley, on concepts and with companies and software engineers who seemed like they had just discovered gold. Stanford’s Denny’s and Starbucks were buzzing with napkin plans and VC talk. It sounded like hype, but it seemed to work.
Staying at the Sunnyvale Hilton, having just got back from a morning run around the quiet neighbourhood, I watched as Steve Jobs breezed through the lobby, in jeans and leather jacket and one of those leather cross-body bags, with a casual hello to some friends I presumed, and off to a meeting room, none of the celebrity ego or grandeur.
25 years later, Silicon Valley is still at the leading edge of the tech industry. But it’s different.
The Bay Area’s mature infrastructure, access to talented professionals, and strong engineering tradition make it a prime spot for driving innovation. Despite the high operational costs, it’s also a great place for startups that want to make a name for themselves with unique technological solutions in areas such as web app development or mobile app development.
It’s smart to keep up with the local startup scene because what happens in the Silicon Valley pretty much sets the tone for many other tech hubs scenes like New York or even Stockholm.
Here are 17 of the most promising startups in San Francisco and its Bay Area:
Blockchain
1. Ripe.io
Founder: Raja Ramachandran
Total funding amount: $2.4M
Ripe.io takes advantage of blockchain and the Internet of Things (IoT) to disrupt the area of digital food supply chain. Thanks to their technology, users get to learn more about the quality of their food, its origin, and many more things that help make an informed choice and become more aware as consumers. But that’s not the only benefit of the technology. Farmers can use it as well to automate internal processes and meet the current market demands for high-quality and sustainable produce. Ripe.io offers supply chain tracking and visibility, secure data aggregation and sharing, and a scaleable blockchain, sensor, and IoT integration.
2. Wyre
Founders: Ioannis Giannaros, Michael Dunworth
Total funding amount: $6.2M
Wyre wants to cause a revolution in the banking industry with its cutting-edge blockchain solutions. Founded in 2013, the startup uses proprietary blockchain technology to enable cross-border payments, reducing the time and expenses that usually come with banks and other financial institutions. Most of the time, banks take up to 3 days and charge 4-6% for international money transfers. Wyre allows completing transactions in less than six hours and charges less than 1%.
3. Instalocate
Founder: Ankur Jain
Total funding amount: Not stated
This blockchain startup from Silicon Valley provides a personalized assistant for busy travelers who want to take full control over their schedules. Instalocate is building a network of artificial intelligence (AI) assistants to help consumers manage their travels. By combining the power of machine learning, Internet of Moving Things and modern interfaces such as conversational UI and voice, the startup aims to reduce travel anxiety and make traveling more comfortable and pleasant. The Instalocate assistant tracks flights in real time predicts possible problems with user journeys and converts flight delays into ‘free’ money. The tool is now available as a chatbot inside Facebook Messenger.
Fintech
4. Sparkling Logic
Founders: Carlos Serrano Morales, Carole-Ann Matignon, Davorin Kuchan
Total funding amount: Not stated
Sparkling Logic helps organizations make smart business decisions using machine learning, business rules, and decision analytics. Companies can extract maximum value from customer interactions through dynamic pricing. The application also includes risk management and compliance in the financial services industry to manage flash fraud for daily transactions. Sparkling Logic also uses IoT in the energy and utility industries to monitor equipment remotely through sensors.
5. Securitize
Founders: Carlos Domingo, Jamie Finn, Shay Finkelstein, Tal Elyashiv
Total funding amount: $12.8M
Securitize is a software platform companies can use to issue and manage digital securities (security tokens) such as distributions, dividends, and share buy-backs. The startup’s Digital Securities Protocol (DS Protocol) enables seamless and fully-compliant trading across multiple markets at the same time. Securitize is a leader in the security token space.
6. Charlie Finance
Founders: Ilian Georgiev, Ivo Parashkevov, Robert Luedeman
Total funding amount: $9M
This is a free, text-based penguin that helps consumers manage their finances efficiently. The tool continuously monitors your transactions and sends you an alert when you need to have a closer look at something. Charlie offers quality financial advice that doesn’t scare users with details and complexities, instead offering simple and actionable tips.
AI
7. Nanonets
Founders: Prathamesh Juvatkar, Sarthak Jain
Total funding amount: $120K
This is a SaaS product and machine learning API that helps developers in building machine learning models for all kinds of solutions, including web app development. Software engineers who need to develop a model for identifying objects from sets can benefit a lot from Nanonets technology. The tool helps to increase the adoption of machine learning technology among businesses.
8. Amitree
Founders: Jonathan Aizen, Paul Knegten
Total funding amount: $19.5M
This tool uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate and optimize the real estate industry. Among others, the company released an intelligent assistant for real estate transactions called Folio – it automatically organizes essential transaction details for real estate agents.
9. EdCast
Founder: Karl Mehta
Total funding amount: $66.2M
This award-winning platform is used by Fortune 500 companies and government organizations all over the world to solve problems around the discovery, curation, and recommendation of content across external, internal, and tacit knowledge sources. The solution includes a Learning Experience Platform (LXP), SalesU sales enablement suite, and GuideMe, a multi-language in-app content authoring tool.
Big Data
10. AtScale
Founders: David P. Mariani, James Lai, Matthew Baird, Sarah Gerweck
Total funding amount: $95M
A giant among the Bay area startups, this data warehouse virtualization platform connects Business Intelligence tools to data platforms to enable smooth data migration without disrupting business users. It also helps to accelerate business analysis and define business metrics in one place to deliver consistent operational reporting.
11. Mattermark
Founders: Andy Sparks, Danielle Morrill, Kevin Morrill
Total funding amount: $17.2M
This is a robust data platform that is on its way to becoming the go-to software for venture capitalists and angel investors. It helps to quantify signals of growing startups that may be potentially lucrative. A great tool for anyone interested in investing in budding startups that dare to disrupt their industries. An excellent example of web application development with a purpose.
Health
12. Biomarker
Founder: Garrett Ruhland
Total funding amount: Not stated
Biomarker offers its users with real-time, data-driven access to health supplements. It measures symptoms, health metrics, and other contextual information to match consumers with the right nutritional supplements. Biomarker also measures how users respond to supplements to produce meaningful insights about their quality.
13. Nurx
Founders: Hans Gangeskar and Dr. Edvard Engesaeth
Total funding amount: $41.4M
This inspiring startup aims to improve women’s access to birth control via an easy-to-use application where they can order prescriptions and have it delivered right to their doorstep. For users with health insurance, birth control is provided free of charge. Those without health insurance can benefit from plans that start at $15 per month.
14. Spring Discovery
Founder: Ben Kamens
Total funding amount: $22.3M
Spring Discovery wants to discover new therapies for aging. By targeting the processes of aging itself, the startup aims to uncover new therapies for the diseases of old age such as cardiovascular to neurodegenerative disease. Their machine learning platform accelerates experimentation for discovering such therapies to have consumers live long and healthy.
Biotech
15. Biome Makers
Founders: Adrian Ferrero, Alberto Acedo
Total funding amount: $2.3M
Biome Makers is a biotech startup that specializes in everything there is to know about the microbiome. They use DNA sequencing technologies and proprietary Intelligent Computing systems to help users improve agricultural production and the quality of their products, reducing their reliance on chemicals and the impact of diseases.
16. ImpactVision
Founders: Abi Ramanan, Gustav Nipe
Total funding amount: $1.4M
This startup aims to build a more transparent and secure global food system through with the help of hyperspectral technology that combines the power of digital imaging with ‘spectroscopy’, a chemical technique. Users take a picture of the food and can understand its composition like nutritional content, level of freshness, proteins, fats, sugar, and moisture levels. It’s a non-invasive mechanism for assessing food quality during the production process, in real time.
17. Notable Labs
Founders: Matt De Silva, Pete Quinzio
Total funding amount: $20.9M
Notable Labs is a drug testing service that aims to help oncologists identify the most appropriate treatment options for people with blood cancers. When De Silva’s father was diagnosed with brain cancer, he set out to revolutionize the way blood cancers are treated today with his venture. Doctors send collected a blood or bone marrow sample to Notable Labs which chooses a panel of FDA-approved drugs that have published anti-cancer effects, taking into account the patient’s diagnosis. The service then tests thousands of drug combinations on the sample and delivers a report of the results to the physician within just a few days.
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