Silicon Valley is the most popular place in the world for startups to begin their operations and attract everyone’s attention to their unique business ideas. Silicon Valley is actually a nickname given to certain portion in San Francisco Bay Area in northern California. The reason why Silicon Valley is the perfect place startups is that it is easy to raise fund as nearly 40% of all US venture funding are invested in Silicon Valley startups. One can get the perfect culture to experiment with crazy business ideas, hire freelancers whenever there is a requirement, compete and get motivated by other startups and even get ideas and advice from experts for free.
It is a dream of every working guy to get a job in Silicon Valley startups and be a part of the next big thing. There is no dearth of freelance jobs in Silicon Valley but one has to be with the buzzing startups to strength their resumes and have a picture-perfect future career. Here are the hottest startups in Silicon Valley in 2018 everyone needs to watch out.
- Numerai –
Funding – $7.5 Million
Numeria is founded by Richard Craib in 2015. It is based on the next big thing – Artificial Intelligence. It is a hedge fund manager that is run by AI system which is built for multiple thousands of anonymous data scientists. All the trades are encrypted and the trades have made the company profitable. It has managed to catch the attention of the investors due to its secretive crowd-sourced AI system.
Possible Reason For Succeeding – Even though it is highly anonymous, the fact that it is a money-making machine and based on artificial intelligence, it is set to be a trendsetter. Its sustainability is doubtful as the assets under management are not disclosed.
- Zipline
Funding – $41 Million
Zipline is founded by a group of five people in 2011. It is a robotics company that manufactures autonomous drones that can carry items to definite remote locations. The drones are highly efficient and they can operate in extreme weather conditions and reach remote places where it is difficult for manpower to reach. They can be used not only by logistic companies but also during emergency situations to boost rescue operation, supply essentials, and foods to needy people.
Possible reason For Succeeding – It is the perfect time for drone manufacturing companies to get the spotlight and make life easy for people. Big logistic companies have already started to experiment with drones for faster delivery.
- Gladly
Funding – $63 million
The company was founded by three people in 2014 and in such a short period, it is close to overcoming the leaders in its niche. Gladly is a customer support service company and it differs from others in its ticket creation process. A customer no more has to email, call, chat, or tweet multiple times to explain their current or past problems to different agents. A centralized database is maintained and all the agents can access that and understand the problem the client mentioned earlier. The service will be faster and the customer experience will be better. The company is likely to create massive freelance jobs on a very large scale as it keeps on expanding exponentially.
Possible Reason For Succeeding – Current leaders in customer support service sector do not have this organized and centralized approach and to change their current model, company’s operation can get disrupted. Therefore, gladly has the opportunity to capitalize and overcome the leaders by providing efficient service.
- Figma –
Funding – $18 Million
Figma is founded by Dylan Field and Evan Wallace in 2012. Figma is a platform for user interface (UI) designers to collaborate on a project in the real time. What designers can do is they can create different versions of a project and save them so that they can revisit and build further on them at a later instance. It will be helpful for managers to hire freelancers with designing skills and monitor their works and progress on projects.
Possible Reason For Succeeding – There are no platforms available where a group of designers can work in collaboration just like the way programmers do. Hence, there is a dire need and a great demand for such a product for smooth teamwork.
- Discord
Funding – $79.3 Million
If you are in a group of avid gamers, you might have already come across the name Discord. This startup company based out of Silicon Valley has a messaging app exclusively for gamers. Through the app, gamers can have voice and text chat in an online multiplayer game mode for all games. It already has the best features of various popular messaging apps and gamers have started to like and spread it.
Possible Reason For Succeeding – The concept is refreshing and there is a huge demand for a messaging platform in multiplayer game option to take jives at opponents and do teamwork easily. The app is on the verge of becoming the next big app as it already has millions of users.
Honorable Mentions –
- Element Analytics is a great Silicon Valley startups to watch out as their advanced and powerful platform is helping various big industries to analyze data and provide actionable insights. It is predicting the future possibilities and trends so that they can thrive on unseen opportunities and strategies better. Microsoft and OSISoft have become their partners and the company has raised $7 million funding.
- Segment provide s a powerful platform for the integration of all consumer data from all the popular sales applications like Stripe, SalesForce and likewise. This is helping the data analytics to get an accurate data picture, analysis, and future trends to form better strategies for expansion and improvement. The company has over 1,500 big clients and raised over $100 million funding.
- Modsy is providing the app to redesign your home virtually using Augmented Reality. Before you paint or buy any furniture, you can check out the color combination on your wall or find the suitable the place to fit that furniture in your room.
- LitBit provides an operating system to connect users to Internet Of Things which is another breakout trend in 2018.
- The company named 21 has developed a product that converts a computer into Bitcoin cash register. Cryptocurrency has been the trend of 2017 and this company can be a huge success once Bitcoins are made valid for transactions across the globe.
Whether you are a job seeker in the next big Silicon Valley startup or you are an entrepreneur yourself who likes to keep track of the latest happenings in the startup ecosystem, you need to watch out for these 10 hottest startups in Silicon Valley for 2018.