General
October 18, 2018
7 minutes read

These 25 startups made Forbes 2018 ‘Next Billion-Dollar Startups’ list

Anduril, The first on this list counts Oculus founder Palmer Luckey pictured here as part of its founding team image…

Anduril, The first on this list counts Oculus founder Palmer Luckey pictured here as part of its founding team

image credit: Web Summit on Flickr

Forbes just recently came out with this year’s edition of its renowned list of ‘Next Billion-Dollar Startups’, One which in previous times have predicted the rise of notable names such as $4 billion DoorDash, PillPack (purchased by Amazon for a reported $1 billion), Thumbtack, Opendoor and construction software unicorn Procore.

For this year, Forbes in collaboration with TrueBridge Capital Partners asked nearly 200 VC firms to nominate the companies they thought are most likely to become unicorns. From the over 100 submitted, Forbes narrowed it down to the 25 listed below:

Amplitude : SF based analytics startup with $57 million raised and over 12,000 customers including Microsoft, Square, Atlassian, Under Armour, Dropbox, InVision, Autodesk, DoorDash, Paypal, Hubspot, Instacart and several others.

Anduril Industries : Defense startup which counts Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey as part of its founding team.

Auth0 : Bellevue based startup with $110 million in funding so far which provides a universal identity platform for web, mobile, IoT, and internal applications.

Away : New York based luggage designer, manufacturer and retailer with estimated $150 million projected revenues for this year.

Braze : NY based mobile marketing startup which raised $80 million at $850 million early this month.

Cloud9 : Top esports team with over $70 million raised as well as sponsor partnerships with HP, Twitch, MSI, Red Bull and also the U.S. Air Force.

Couchbase : Mountain View based startup with $155 million raised so far and notable for its “NoSQL” databases which enable developers add users quickly and create more responsive UI interfaces (sometimes at the cost of flexibility and sophistication).

Coursera : Widely used online learning platform founded by Stanford professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Kolle valued at $800 million from a last year round.

Flywire : Fintech startup and provider of foreign currency payment solutions for universities, hospitals and businesses. Raised $100 million in July.

Honey : Coupon codes browser extension with projected $100 million revenue for this year.

KeepTruckin : Electronic logs and fleet management software provider for trucking services. $80 million in equity raised so far.

Lemonade : Insurance tech startup which raised $120 million from Softbank December last year.

Mapbox : Provider of custom online maps with $228 million raised so far and customers such as Scoot, Instacart, Tableau Software, Palantir, General Electric, National Geographic, and Uber.

Markforged : 3D printer provider with projected $70 million in 2018 revenues.

Pendo : Web and mobile based analytics software maker with customers such as Zendesk, Infor, Namely, Cisco, Optimizely and Citrix.

Podium : Customer communication software maker with customers across a wide range of industries.

Poshmark : Digital marketplace centered on clothing and accessories with over 40 million users and an estimated projection of $130 million in revenue for this year.

Skillz : Online mobile multiplayer competition platform estimated to bring in $358 million in revenue for this year.

Sonder : Airbnb like hospitality startup with $135 million raised so far and a $100 million run rate. $85 million raised in August.

ThirdLove : Online only underwear brand with projected $160 million in 2018 revenues. Valued at $750 million.

Transfix : Digital freight broker with customers such as Target, Unilever, J.Crew, Staples and Anheuser-Busch.

TripleLift : Adtech company with estimated $150 million for this year revenue and advertisers spanning various top consumer brands.

uBiome : San Francisco based biotech company that sells at home kits fitted with key technology developed to to sequence the human microbiomes. $105 million raised so far and projected $100 million revenue for this year.

VSCO : Social photography mobile app with over a million paid subscribers and 73% of users under 25.

Welltok : Denver based enterprise Software as a Service company for consumer health. $280 million raised so far and projected $80 million+ for 2018 revenue.