ByAmy Feldman
T
his is the 11th year we have partnered with TrueBridge Capital Partners to scour the land for budding unicorns. To qualify, startups must be venture-backed, based in the U.S. and (currently) worth less than $1 billion. Unsurprisingly, artificial intelligence dominates this year—20 of the 25 companies are AI-focused, with applications in military, accounting and health tech. Pay attention to this list: Our track record is superb. Of the 250 alumni, 140, or 56%, became unicorns, including DoorDash, Figma and Anduril. Forty-two were acquired; only two went public for less than $1 billion. Just five—2% of our selections—have imploded or shut down.
If you want to build medical devices, you need patients. Boston-based AcuityMD helps manufacturers find the right physicians based on the patients they treat by using de-identified data (think surgical histories, medical referrals) for 325 million people to craft marketing plans. Customers include Synchron, which used it to find patients for a brain-computer interface preclinical trial, and Intellijoint, which did so to market a new surgical tool for hip and knee replacements.
There are lots of influencers on the internet, and finding the right one for an ad campaign can be frustrating and time-consuming. Enter New York City–based Agentio, which offers a marketplace of creators so brands can easily find which influencers will work best for them. It’s great for the creators too: They simply upload details about their upcoming YouTube videos to Agentio to sell ad spots to businesses such as Away, DoorDash, Mint Mobile and Uber.
