Based on our analysis, which you can read in greater detail here, these are the top 20 companies who look primed to raise a Series A soon (or already have, but didn’t announce it yet). I’ve filtered by startups who last raised between September 1, 2013 and January 31, 2014 with at least 15 employees and at least 20% employee growth in the past 6 months:
Eden, the YC-backed startup that offers on-demand tech help service direct to your home, has today announced the raise of $1.3 million in seed funding. Investors include Canvas Ventures, Eniac Ventures, Comcast Ventures, Maven Ventures, Y Combinator, Dylan Smith from Box, and James Beshara from Tilt (with his first angel investment).
PicoBrew is a beer-centered startup in Seattle, founded by brothers Bill and Jim Mitchell (Bill being an ex-Microsoft executive) and Avi Geiger. It is, in short, magical.
The machine at the heart of their operation is the Zymatic — an apparatus that simplifies one of the main steps in beer making by reducing the need to monitor the cooking process of creating wort (unfermented beer). This web-connected device provides temperature data about each step of the brewing process and automatically transfers wort to and from kegs with the intention of letting you “set it and forget it.”
Startups continue to infiltrate industrial markets including agriculture and even space. The oil and gas industry isn’t immune to this wave of technological innovation.
Most holiday-seekers have stepped off a plane at one time or another and felt the cold wind of their destination mocking their optimistic attire. Now, Swedish travelers no longer need to suffer this cruel fate because Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport has created the first Climate Portal, which lets visitors preview the weather conditions of destinations all around the world.
Talking to a machine over the phone or through a chat window can be an infuriating experience. However, several research groups, including some at large technology companies like Facebook and Google, are making steady progress toward improving computers’ language skills by building upon recent advances in machine learning.
Wayook, the Spanish on-demand cleaning startup, has quietly raised its first funding round: a modest €640,000 from Axon Partners Group. The investment closed a few weeks back but went mostly under the radar, which is synonymous of Wayook as a whole.
Launched a year ago out of Salamanca, the small Spanish town known mostly for its University, the startup is active in 40 cities in Spain, and has held its own against better-funded competitors, including Helpling, the heavily-backed on-demand cleaning startup founded by Rocket Internet.
The California labor commission has ruled that Uber’s drivers are considered employees, not contractors. The ruling puts a major dent in the ride hailing service’s business model.
Because Uber is involved in all aspects of the business, the court ruled earlier this month that the company has to treat drivers as staff, Reuters reports. The ruling came as a result of a complaint from one of Uber’s San Francisco based drivers. Uber is apparently appealing the labor commission’s decision to award the driver $4,000 in expenses.
Call it ground zero in a patient’s battle with cancer: the tumor microenvironment, the tissue around a cancerous cell that gets tricked into doing its bidding. That critical terrain is becoming the focus of a lot of fresh ideas for scientists—and one of them is taking shape today, with the emergence of a startup called XTuit Pharmaceuticals.
