Yesterday, the annual 2019 Breakout List launched on Product Hunt, naming the latest batch of “high potential and high growth” startups on a breakout trajectory.
The Breakout List was founded in 2014 to help tech workers vet companies for rocketship potential.
These startups usually have a solid VC backing, but the list is not scientific by any means. More often, companies that make the list are going after large markets and generating revenue fast.
“We help engineers, salespeople and other people in tech accelerate their learning and career trajectory. Investors know lots about the potential of a given startup - they’ve likely seen or been told their private financial metrics. Candidates deserve better information on companies. They’re betting their career,” Breakout List Maker Chris Barber wrote on Product Hunt.
Here's a breakdown of a few of the top startups:
📦 Flexport ($304M raised) is a freight forwarder that enables faster and cheaper shipping. Ultimately, Flexport is digitizing the entire international shipping process, allowing customers to do things like track the freight in their global supply chain in real-time.
🚘 Nuro ($92M raised) is building autonomous vehicles for last mile delivery. The company's technology aims to substantially reduce delivery prices using autonomous vehicles and has grown from 0 to more than 200 employees in two years.
🏠 Blend ($160M raised) was founded by a group of ex-Palantir employees and simplifies the mortgage application process for both borrowers and lenders. In the past year, the team's headcount grew from 270 to 400.
💌 Clearbit ($2M raised) makes business intelligence APIs — tools that help you learn things like who's behind an email address. The company was founded in 2014 and has since launched a Gmail widget to help you find anyone's email address, high-converting lead forms, and a tool to turn anonymous web traffic into data.
⚡️ Bolt wants to give retailers a better shot at competing with Amazon through a dead-simple checkout for customers. The company's team includes a handful of folks from Google, Facebook, Twitter and Airbnb, and grew from 15 to 60 in the past year. The company's funding is undisclosed but its backers include founders of PayPal, Intuit, Splunk, StubHub, and Oculus, to name a few.
💪 Airtable ($162M raised) is a productivity tool for teams that's part spreadsheet and part database. In March, the company announced a new apps platform that gives non-coders tools to build complex software. Airtable is also a sponsor of Product Hunt Radio. Coincidence??? 🤔😂
✨ Ubiquity6 ($37.5M) helps developers create augmented reality apps. The small team is engineering-heavy and “pre-breakout.” It launched out of stealth in August with fanfare, demonstrating a beta preview of its technology for the first time at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
💵 Atrium ($75.5M) is a “better law firm for startups.” It's really a low-cost legal option for young companies, with Justin Kan at the helm.
💸 Reserve aims to solve a major challenge with cryptocurrencies: price stability and actual functionality as transactional money. The company is backed by people like Peter Thiel and Sam Altman, and is currently in a “pre-breakout” phase.
🚙 Comma ($8.1M) is a self-driving car OS. The CEO is George Hotz, and the company is building technology in tandem with the autonomous vehicle industry.
Also on the list: Neuralink, Discord, Superhuman (get your invite here), Plaid, Notion, AngelList, and more.
In today's episode of Product Hunt Radio, AngelList partner Parker Thompson and Village Global co-founder and partner Erik Torenberg join us to chat about:
💰 How investors think about companies with distributed teams
💡 If crypto is a threat to Facebook
💁 How opportunities emerge through platform shifts
Listen now and big thanks to our sponsors, Airtable, GE Ventures, Intercom and Stripe for their support. 😸