Monthly Archives: March 2016

Advice to Grads: Join A Winning Startup (v. 2016)

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Around this time of year, many students are focused on finding a job in Startup Land and building their careers. If you have your own idea and no one can talk you out of it, that’s awesome. But for most undergraduates and graduate students, they have no idea how to get plugged in to the startup community. I gave some advice in my post, Seeking a Job in Startup Land, on the process for selecting a startup that is a good fit, but I didn’t name specific companies who I think are emerging winners and thus good places to begin your career.

For many years, I have been keeping an updated list of interesting, scaling start ups that are well-regarded and hiring (private or recently public) to share with the students in my HBS class to point them in the direction of high quality, fast growing companies worth exploring. Andy Rachleff at Stanford / Wealthfront does the same in the fall (here’s their Oct 2015 list), although it is lighter on East Coast companies. Last year, I open sourced the list and with graduation season coming, I thought I would share an updated version, again organized by geography. Note that this is my own imperfect point of view with imperfect data (also informed with a sprinkling of Mattermark data and CB Insights; here is the latter’s full list of the, as of this writing, 154 unicorns, which is another interesting filter).

Full disclosure: Flybridge portfolio companies are hyperlinked. Feedback welcome!  I’m sure I made many mistakes and omissions.

Boston:

  • Private: Acacia, Acquia, Acronis, Actifio, AdAgility, Affirmed Networks, Anaqua, Applause, Attivio, BevSpot, Bit9, BitSight, CarGurus, ClearSky Data, Cloudlock, Data Robot, DataXu, Digital Lumens, Draft Kings, Drift, Drizly, Dyn, Ellevation, Evertrue, FlyWire, Fuze, HourlyNerd, Infinidat, Iora Health, Jana, Jibo, Kenshoo, Kyruus, Localytics, Lola, LovePop, M.Gemi, Nasuni, OwnerIQ, OnShape, OpenBay, Panorama Education, PillPack, Pixability, Placester, Promoboxx, Rethink Robotics, Savingstar, Simplisafe, Simplivity, Sonos, Tamr, Toast,Valore Books, Veracode, Virgin Health, VMTurbo, Zerto
  • Public: Akamai, CyberArk, Demandware, Hubspot, iRobot, Kayak/Priceline, LogMeIn, Rapid7, Trip Advisor, Wayfair

NYC:

  • Private: 1st Dibs, Adore.me, Alfred, Amino, Andela, Appnexus, BetterCloud, Betterment, Birchbox, Bloomberg, Boxed, Blue Apron, BuzzFeed, Casper, CB Insights, ClassPass, Codecademy, Compass, Contently, DataDog, DataMinr, Digital Ocean, Fan Duel, Floord, Fundera, General Assembly, Handy, Harry’s, IEX, Integral Ad Science, Jet.com, KeyMe, Kickstarter, Knewton, Mark43, MediaMath, Message.ai, Moat, MongoDB, Namely, Newscred, Oscar Health, Outbrain, Payoneer, PlaceIQ, Policy Genius, RadioDash, Rent the Runway, Sailthru, SeatGeek, Shapeways, Spotify, Sprinklr, Stack Exchange, tracx, Vaultive, Warby Parker, WeWork, Yext, YouNow, ZocDoc
  • Public: Etsy, Match.com, OnDeck, Shutterstock

SF/SValley:

  • Private: 23AndMe, Airbnb, Anaplan, Angellist, App Annie, App Dynamics, Automattic, Beepi, BloomReach, Checkr, Cloudbees, Cloudera, Cloudflare, Coinbase, Collective Health, Coupa, Coursera, CreditKarma, DataStax, Docker, Docusign, DoorDash, DoubleDutch, Drawbridge, Dropbox, Earnest, Eventbrite, Evolent Health, FundBox, Funding Circle, Gigster, Gigya, GitHub, GlassDoor, Gusto, HackerRank, Houzz, Instacart, Jasper, Jawbone, JustFab, Lattice Engines, Lumosity, Lyft, MasterClass, Mattermark, MixPanel, Monetate, NerdWallet, Nextdoor, Nutanix, Okta, OfferUp, Optimizely, Palantir, Pinterest, Plaid, Plastiq, PlexChat, Postmates, Quizlet, Quora, Shazam, Signifyd, Slack, Slice, SoFi, SpaceX, StitchFix, Stripe, Sumo Logic, Survey Monkey, Theorem LP, Thumbtack, Twilio, Uber, UpWork, Wallapop, Wanelo, WealthFront, Wish, Zumper, ZScaler, Zuora
  • Public: Atlassian, Box, Castlight Health, FireEye, Fitbit, Horton Works, Lending Club, LinkedIn, New Relic, Palo Alto Networks, ServiceNow, Splunk, Square, Tableau, Tesla, Twitter, Workday, Yelp, Zendesk

Israel (often with HQ or business operations in the US – either BOS, NY or SF):

  • Private: Argus, Fiverr, Forter, Freightos, Fundbox, Hola, IronSource, Kaltura, Kaminario, Moovit, ObserveIT, Outbrain, Playbuzz, Riskified, Sisense, SundaySky, Taboola, tracx, Valens, Wochit, Wibbitz
  • Public: CyberArk, Mobileye, Wix

London: Bla bla car, CityMapper, Duedil, FarFetch, Funding Circle, GoCardless, King, Purple Bricks, Shazam, TransferWise, Vouched For

LA: AirPush, Auction.com, Cornerstone on Demand, Dollar Shave Club, Honest Company, JustFab, Network of One, OpenX, Ring, Riot Games, Rubicon Project, SnapChat, SpaceX, Telesign, Tinder/Match.com, TrueCar, Zefr, ZestFinance, ZipRecruiter

SEA: Apptio, Avalara, Julep, Juno, Koru, Peach, Porch, Pro, Refin

CO: LogRhythm, Rally, Sympoz, Webroot, Welltok

UT: AtTask, Domo, Health Catalyst, Hirevue, Inside Sales, Instructure, Plurasight, Qualtrics

CHI: AvantCredit, BucketFeet, Fooda, Groupon, Iris Mobile, Narrative Sciences, Raise, SpotHero, SproutSocial, Uptake

DC: 2U, Cvent, Opower, Optoro, Sonatype, Vox Media, WeddingWire

ATL: Kabbage, MailChimp, Yik Yak

– See more at: http://www.bostonvcblog.typepad.com/#sthash.sc44tsAz.dpuf