Trend Riding Startups

Braze (formerly Appboy) is a customer engagement platform founded in 2011 that helps large consumer-scale companies orchestrate personalized messaging across multiple channels. With 600 enterprise customers paying $100k+ ACVs, the company has grown to ~$60M ARR (5M/month) with a net revenue retention of ~140%, demonstrating strong expansion revenue from existing customers. Having raised $170M total and grown to 300 employees, Braze is positioned to reach $100M+ ARR within the next year.

Hive Blockchain is a digital currency mining company founded by Harry Pochgranti that validates cryptocurrency transactions on blockchain networks, primarily Ethereum. The company went public on the TSX Venture Exchange in September 2017, raising $17 million on day one followed by additional equity raises totaling approximately $200 million Canadian by end of 2017. As of Q1 2018, Hive operates mining facilities in Iceland and Sweden with a $30 million annualized run rate revenue.

Bindle is a digital credential wallet that converts health records into non-fungible tokens, allowing venues and events to verify vaccination status and test results without accessing sensitive medical data. Founded in June 2020 with first release in August 2020, the company is currently processing around 4,000 scans monthly across 200 active paying customers and 100,000 installed wallets across 30 US states and Canadian provinces. Operating at a usage-based model charging 10 cents per scan, Bindle generates approximately $400-500 monthly in revenue while competing against larger players like Clear and IBM.

Proto is a hardware startup founded by David Nussbaum that created a telephone booth-sized device projecting realistic holographic images to enable virtual presence. The technology is currently used to transport professors, doctors, speakers, and celebrities to classrooms, hospitals, and events globally, with the founder's vision of eventually bringing the technology into consumer living rooms.

Sonos was founded in 2002 by John MacFarlane to create wireless home audio systems at a time when streaming and the iPod were brand new. The team engineered high-quality wireless sound systems and integrated them with mobile technology, eventually adding support for voice assistants like Siri and Alexa. Today, Sonos is an established player in the music hardware market with projected annual sales exceeding $1.5 billion.

Steve Ells, founder of Chipotle, is launching Kernel, a new chain of small, highly automated, vegan restaurants designed to address climate change concerns. The concept leverages robotic automation to benefit workers, customers, owners, and the environment. This represents Ells' attempt to revolutionize the restaurant industry a second time after pioneering the fast-casual format with Chipotle in 1993.

Khanmigo is a new learning platform built by Sal Khan at Khan Academy that uses generative AI technology from OpenAI's ChatGPT to help students with their schoolwork. The platform aims to act as a personal tutor for every student and a teaching assistant for every educator, potentially reshaping education in the post-COVID era.

Axios is a digital news website co-founded by Jim VandeHei in 2017, distinguished by its bullet-point format designed specifically for internet consumption. The company gained a strong following for its concise, accessible approach to news and was acquired by Cox Enterprises for over $500 million, validating its product-market fit and growth trajectory.

Cruise is an autonomous vehicle company founded by Kyle Vogt in 2013 that builds fully driverless 'robo taxis'. The company was acquired by General Motors three years after launch and now operates driverless vehicles in San Francisco with plans to expand to more U.S. cities.

Roblox is a platform launched in 2006 by David Baszucki and Erik Cassel where users can play millions of different games across virtual worlds, create their own games, and connect with others. During the pandemic in 2020, the platform became a major social hub for US kids, and the company is now valued at over $28 billion.

Sierra is an AI startup founded by Brett Taylor, legendary product leader and builder who previously co-created Google Maps, invented the like button at FriendFeed, built Quip (sold to Salesforce for $750M), and served as CTO at Facebook and co-CEO at Salesforce. The company is building AI agents to help with customer service, sales, and enterprise operations, positioning itself at the forefront of what Taylor believes is the inevitable shift toward agent-based software and outcome-based pricing models.

Cognition built Devin, an autonomous AI software engineer designed to work as a fully autonomous agent integrated into engineering workflows via Slack, GitHub, and Linear. Started as a hackathon in November 2023, launched publicly in March 2024, and has grown to serve companies from startups to Fortune 100 enterprises. Cognition's 15-person engineering team dogfoods Devin extensively, with each engineer managing approximately 5 concurrent Devin instances that collectively commit around 25% of all PRs to production (expected to exceed 50% by end of year).

After.com is a cremation-as-a-service platform founded by Mormons based in Provo, Utah. The company handles the full logistics of cremation—from lead capture to tracking—similar to Domino's Pizza Tracker, allowing customers to pre-plan or arrange services after death. The business was built on recognizing a major demographic trend: cremation in the US rose from 10% to over 50-70% of end-of-life choices in the past 20 years, a 'one chart business' opportunity.

Bitcloud is an invite-only, blockchain-based social network that lets users buy and sell 'creator coins' tied to people's reputation and popularity. Pre-loaded accounts for the top 15,000 Twitter influencers with founder rewards (ranging up to $50k+) have driven viral adoption among early adopters, who report 5-10x returns in days. However, the platform currently has no withdrawal mechanism, causing skepticism about whether it's a long-term protocol or speculative bubble.

Hoppin is a virtual event platform founded by Johnny Bafferat that achieved unicorn status (over $1 billion valuation) in approximately 10-12 months. Launched in February 2020 just as COVID-19 forced events online, the company scaled from 6 people to nearly 300 employees in 9 months by leveraging remote hiring, employee referrals, and a viral product with a 3-5% conversion rate from event attendees to event organizers. The company raised $180 million total and was valued at $32 million in January 2020.

Hot or Not launched in 2000 as a simple photo-rating site and became one of the first viral web products, reaching 30,000+ IP addresses on day one and becoming a top-20 most trafficked website within two months. The founders stumbled into a sustainable freemium business model (converting 5-20% of users to paid dating features) that generated $10,000-$20,000+ daily revenue by the early 2000s, ultimately scaling to $6M in annual earnings before selling around 2008.

James Traff made $280,000 in approximately 5-6 weeks from a custom iOS icon set that took only 2 hours to create and package. The breakthrough came when his Twitter screenshot of a customized iPhone home screen went viral, followed by MKBHD featuring the icons in a YouTube video that reached 6 million views. His success was built on 7 years of design experience, a habit of sharing work on social media, and the ability to quickly capitalize on trending opportunities using no-code tools.

Sharkius was a social games company founded in 2007 that achieved $60-80k/month revenue in its first year by building compelling text-based games on the Facebook platform. The startup failed due to over-expansion, poor management, lack of marketing expertise, and algorithmic changes to Facebook that reduced organic reach. David Kramaley learned critical lessons about team building, marketing diversification, and staying lean that he applied to his later venture, Chessable.

Tandem was a live streaming platform for fitness built by Nick Raushenbush and co-founders Tristan and Kevin as a 3-month hackathon project. The team validated the idea by contacting 5,000 fitness professionals and onboarding 50 content creators, achieving viewership through Product Hunt and Facebook posts. The startup ultimately failed due to poor content engagement, mobile streaming quality issues, and unsustainable monetization, teaching Nick valuable lessons about market validation that later contributed to his success with Shogun.

WorldOS was a P2P infrastructure provider launched in 2003 by Lucas Gonze that aimed to capitalize on the P2P trend but ultimately failed due to lack of market need. Lucas built the initial version solo, then recruited a business person and designer, but discovered he was productizing a buzzword rather than solving real customer problems. The startup's failure taught Lucas that talking to customers and understanding actual pain points is critical—lessons he later applied to data services in the music industry.