Here’s our list of the best world startup projects.
Slack
This is a popular corporate messenger that appeared in 2013. It provides great opportunities for online teamwork, and it’s especially suitable for small and medium-sized companies. Slack makes unnecessary formal email correspondence between employees and a complex internal workflow. This service was ideal for communication between employees at work, but it also allowed the creation of communities of interest, business or leisure. That’s why HR workers also use Slack to find the right specialists.
This fastest business application in history now values nearly billion.
The application was created by Stuart Butterfield, a graduate of the Cambridge Faculty of Philosophy. After seven rounds of investments, his startup was able to raise about 0 million and become one of the best among projects in the world. It’s especially popular in the USA and European countries. On the very first day of testing, more than 8 thousand organizations registered in the Slack system.
Uber
One of the most famous and scandalous startups in the world, which outraged competitors regularly try to catch up with and desperately try to somehow cope with its expansion. At the same time, the project is very successful, it’s estimated by investors at billion.
The idea of linking a taxi order to a mobile application turned out to be just golden. It belongs to Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp. The idea came from one of the founders in Paris, when he couldn’t get himself a taxi.
Launched in 2009, Uber brought huge profits to its creators. Leading venture financiers of the world fought for the right to invest in the service. This is understandable, because the company's daily revenue is now several million.
Now mobile taxis under this brand operate in more than 80 cities around the world, and the number of trips using Uber in the USA has grown by 250%. The company continues to actively explore the global market and expand.
Zenefits
Zenefits was founded in 2013 by entrepreneur Parker Conrad, who until recently served as its CEO. In a year, the project has gone 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 billion. Zenefits boasts some of Silicon Valley's biggest investors (like Andreessen Horowitz) and is valued at .5 billion.
The project offers innovative software for the personnel departments of enterprises, which significantly facilitates personnel management and document management in companies. The service allows you to automatically calculate salaries for employees, calculate benefits, bonuses, labor productivity ratios, and determine vacation dates.
In February 2016, Zenefits changed its director to David Sachs, who took emergency measures to maintain the high appreciation of the project by investors. Despite the fact that now the company is experiencing some difficulties, the number of its customers still totals 20,000 people.
Porch
Here’s one of the best startups in the world, which appeared in Seattle in 2013. The project was created to connect professionals who can do home or appliance repair work and people who need their services. A user-friendly interface and ordering system allow you to find the right specialist very quickly, which was immediately appreciated by numerous Porch users. During its existence, the company managed to raise million in 3 funding rounds.
Porches are:
- 3 million professionals with experience and references
- 140 million deals
- over 0 million in venture capital.
The company gives a ,000 guarantee to all customers if the quality of the work performed doesn’t suit the customer. The founders of Porch say that their business continues to grow and develop, has excellent prospects and big plans for the future.
A new type of social internet service founded by Ben Silberman in 2008. With it, each user can create their own unique virtual "boards" on which he collects and stores images grouped by various topics. Very quickly, Pinterest has grown into a worldwide directory of ideas and inspiration for a very large global audience of creatives and everyday users. The project is especially popular among women, for example, brides looking for wedding style or young mothers organizing photo shoots for their babies. Of course, it’s appreciated by all experts in the artistic field.
It took the startup less than a year to reach its first 10,000 users. Zilberman says that he personally compiled and sent letters of invitation to the first 5 thousand. This figure now represents 70 million per month in the US and 150 million worldwide. The project, to date, has overtaken Twitter in terms of audience size. Financially, it’s also very prosperous. Since its inception, it has attracted .3 billion in investments.
Casper
An extremely successful online service offering mattresses and other sleep accessories. Offering a practical and serious approach even to the most ordinary household items, it’s able to bring the 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 estimated the project at 0 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 one and only kind of it, but in different sizes. Pleasant bonuses that successfully complement the high quality of Casper are:
- fast delivery;
- compact packaging;
- the possibility of testing and returning goods.
At the same time, the cost of a standard-size mattress starts at 0, but the company gives a 10-year warranty on it. The project successfully withstands competition, although the price of their goods is about twice as high as the average.
SpaceX
It turns out that startups exist in the field of space technology. One of the most successful projects in this area belongs to Tesla CEO 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 was successful and now the company is a real space concern.
The first steps in the implementation of this grandiose plan were made in 2002, and after 8 years SpaceX became the first private company to launch a spacecraft. In 2012, one of his unmanned rockets docked with the International Space Station. After that, management signed a contract with the US Air Force and NASA.
SpaceX is considered the most progressive and promising space carrier, while offering one of the lowest prices in the market for such services.
Snapchat
The third most valuable startup in the world is a mobile application that allows you to send messages with attached photos and videos. It was 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 billion and continues to develop rapidly.
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 content of the application continues to be updated and improved, gradually supplemented with new features.
Rapid growth, thoughtful bold marketing and an audience under 30 are the keys to Snapchat's success, which allowed the company to become the third largest startup in the world by capitalization.
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 0 thousand were received, although 100 were required.
Now you can buy an electronic friend for all family members and get from it not only practical help in the form of the necessary information, but also a couple of funny stories or anecdotes.
Jibo recognizes people and finds its own approach to everyone. It doesn’t know how to move, but it knows how to speak and show emotions. The first samples are already on sale. The creators of Jibo don’t stop there, the design of the robot has already been improved with the investments that the project was able to attract.
Instacart
One of the fastest growing Internet startups of 2015 is based in San Francisco. The project was created as an Internet service for the delivery of 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 take over the market, with revenues up 15 times. Startup development is booming, funds and private investors are confident in the success of Instacart, although competition is growing noticeably every year. The project attracts more and more hundreds of millions of dollars of investments with enviable constancy.
The total funding for the service over two years is about 0 million. Among its investors you can find Sequoia, Khosla Ventures, Canaan Partners, Horowitz and many others.
There’s an impressive variety of projects among the best startups around the world. Some of them are created by one enthusiast, while several thousand different specialists are working on the development of others. Sometimes it takes a month or two from an idea to a finished product, and sometimes it takes years. Each project has its own secret of popularity and its own fascinating take-off story.