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| TOP 10 COMPANIES |
The digital revolution continues to transform the way business is done worldwide. The COVID-19 pandemic has made entrepreneurs more resilient and creative in how they develop strategies for working in a world with less face-to-face contact. And has led to an entirely new crop of startups.
The startups on our list represent some of the most exciting and brilliant ideas across diverse verticals like tech, food services, logistics, and education.
1. OnlyFans
5-year search growth: 9100%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2016
Location: London, UK
Funding: Undisclosed
What they do: During the Covid-19 lockdowns, almost everybody caught wind of an explosive new platform called OnlyFans. Famous for raunchy content, endless memes, and putting power back in the hands of content creators, OnlyFans has been successful despite limited investor backing (mainly due to NSFW content).
Despite net revenue of $2.5 billion in 2022 and a dedicated user base of 7 million fans per month, OnlyFans’ public image has prevented many larger investors from jumping in thus far.
2. StackBlitz
5-year search growth: 2100%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2018
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $7.9 million (Seed)
What they do: Computer programmers love simplicity more than anything else, and StackBlitz serves up a suite of nuts and bolts tools in a single platform. Critical tools like source code editors, automation, and debugging are all accessible in a “Google Suite” type cloud environment. StackBlitz is already being used by Google and other leading enterprise developers worldwide.
3. Linktree
5-year search growth: 2050%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2016
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Funding: $165.7 million (Series C)
What they do: Linktree was designed to help influencers and content creators share content across platforms via a one-click link. Instead of having subscribers searching tediously through different platforms to find their page, a Linktree link branches out to show all of a creator's pages in one simple display.
Featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Digital Trends, Linktree continues to expand its functionality with features like payments and Shopify integration.
4. Fandom
5-year search growth: 236%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2004
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $145.4 million (Series E)
What they do: Fandom is a “nerd’s paradise”, the world’s largest wiki for gaming, fantasy, and entertainment culture all on one site. 350 million rabid fans across 250,000 communities from Halo to Game of Thrones interact with the site on a monthly basis.
Gaming alone is massive on the platform. Over 1.2 billion gaming questions are answered every month with a user base of 125 million gaming users worldwide.
5. Lalamove
5-year search growth: 459%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2013
Location: Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Funding: $2.5 billion (Series F)
What they do: Fresh off of a massive Series F round led by Sequoia China, Asian logistics platform Lalamove continues to ramp up its impressive fulfillment times and last-mile delivery.
As of 2021, Lalamove counts over 10 million customers and an enormous pool of 70,000 drivers as valued users on their platform. Customers and drivers can be matched within 12 seconds, and deliveries are finished within 55 minutes.
6. Preply
5-year search growth: 1075%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2012
Location: Brookline, Massachusetts
Funding: $100.1 million (Series C)
What they do: Preply is a fast-growing one-to-one language tutoring service. Built on a marketplace model like Upwork, students can select tutors from over 200 countries to help them learn anything from Chinese to English.
Preply’s has 32,000 tutors signed up to teach and has an impressive user base of over 100,000 monthly students.
7. Labster
5-year search growth: 587%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2011
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
Funding: $150.5 million (Series C)
What they do: Virtual learning took off in 2020 largely due to necessity. But many educators and students have discovered that online learning has its perks. One of the hardest-hit areas in terms of in-person education over the last 2 years has been lab work. Labs were seen as one of the last frontiers of science that required in-person instruction.
Labster’s software team has developed over 250 high-quality virtual labs for students to experiment on everything from DNA sequencing to cancer treatment. The popular gamified approach has worked and 1,800 institutions and 900,000 students worldwide now use Labster to simulate real lab work.
8. Oura Ring
5-year search growth: 3850%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2013
Location: Oulu, Finland
Funding: $148.3 million (Series C)
What they do: Oura’s sleek Rings have started to permeate the globe. But their creation all started from a small city in Finland by a trio of Finnish entrepreneurs. Less noticeable than many other wearable competitors, Oura monitors heart rate 24/7, sleeping patterns, body temperature, via their smartphone app.
Publications like Wired have given Oura rave reviews for their accurate data and very lightweight design.
9. Tailwind
5-year search growth: 1012%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2012
Location: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Funding: $10.7 million (Series B)
What they do: Pinterest and Instagram are loaded with content creators. Which makes standing out from the crowd hard to do. Tailwind’s visual creation platform is used by over 1,000,000 brands and influencers worldwide largely because it makes sticking out easier than attempting to create content from scratch. Automating the most annoying parts of the creation process like hashtagging, color schemes, and scheduling lets brands focus on the idea behind the posts.
Over 1 million small businesses like Article, Serena & Lily, Jenny Yoo, and even giants like Shopify utilize Tailwind.
10. Gumroad
5-year search growth: 350%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2012
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $16.1 million (Equity Crowdfunding)
What they do: Digital creators have traditionally struggled to monetize their audiences. Gumroad is the answer for over 120,000 creators who have sold over $743 milliion on the platform. Their platform lets creators sell anything from blog posts to cookbooks.
Gumroad has launched a blog, a “university”, and a podcast thanks to the explosion in interest around the platform.
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