Many startups are positioning themselves to take over various business sectors in the next decade. The juggernauts below, however, have all the features that will help them dominate their respective industries.
They are the epitome of innovation, excellent management, and robust funding. On top of that, these startups are an ideal bet on the future of business. Below is a top ten list of the best billion-dollar startups of 2022.
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Walnut.io
- Founders: Yoav Vilner, Danni Friedland
- Equity raised: $56M
- Lead investors: Felicis, NFX, Eight Roads, SV Angel, Liquid2
As per Yoav Vilner, Walnut‘s co-founder, showcasing a product to its market is the toughest nut to crack in the entire sales process . The salespeople must rely on favors from product, R&D, and design colleagues – which usually results in failure.
Teaming up with Danni Friedland, a ‘hacker at heart,’ the duo launched Walnut. Walnut is the world’s first interactive demo software that streamlines the SaaS buying process, so sales reps do not need to rely on anyone else.
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Walnut is working with hundreds of GTM teams around the world, ranging from Fortune 500 clients to smaller startups, and have recently seen millions of people engage on LinkedIn with its latest viral campaign called #WeAreProspects.
It also allows GTM teams to analyze and gather insights on the demo process, plug the process into their CRM’s such as SalesForce and HubSpot, and scale the demo operation within the organization.
This grew into one of the most successful tech landscapes in B2B and SaaS: the interactive demo landscape, led by Walnut as its pioneer.
Spike
- Founders: Dvir Ben-Aroya, Guy Gamzu, Erez Pilosof
- Equity raised: $30.3 million
- Lead investors: Insight Partners, Wix, Koa Labs, and NFX
Few technologies have changed the world as much as the internet and email have. Yet, while the web has evolved from Web 1.0 to 2.0 and is now moving to the decentralized Web 3.0 era, the email application platform has remained virtually unchanged.
Dvir Ben-Aroya, alongside Erez Pilosof of the Walla! web portal, launched Spike to address this reality. Spike reinvents and modernizes the email inbox by making it more people-focused and human. Spike is a smart inbox, a collaborative, fun email platform that creates a chat-like, flowing dialogue between users for enhanced workflow.
Talon Cyber Security
- Founders: Ben-Noon, Ohad Bobrov
- Equity raised: $126 million
- Lead investors: Evolution Equity Partners, Sorenson Ventures
Most mid-size and small-scale businesses operate without the support of security and IT professionals. They have ad-hoc safe internet usage policies, and most insider threat policies are options rather than mandatory acts. However, enterprise-grade security is imperative as businesses adopt Industry 4.0 practices.
Talon Cyber Security modernizes security programs and improves user experiences for hybrid work by delivering the first secure enterprise browser. Built on Chromium, the TalonWork browser provides customers with consistent user experiences, deep security visibility, and control over SaaS and web applications needed to simplify security for the future of work. Deployed in minutes, Talon delivers up to 80% TCO savings compared to alternative solutions without compromising the end-user experience or privacy. Talon was named the Most Innovative Startup of 2022 at the prestigious RSA Conference Innovation Sandbox Contest.
With Talon’s secure enterprise browser, TalonWork, as an organization’s first line of defense, IT and security teams greatly reduce the risks of insider threats and ransomware that can plague modern businesses.
Alyce
- Founders: Greg Segall
- Equity raised: $46.8 million
- Lead investors: General Catalyst, Golden Ventures, Boston Seed Capital
Cal Ripken is Greg Segall’s hero. Despite critics’ opinion that Cal was too big for a shortstop position, he went ahead and redefined that position. He also played the highest number of back-to-back games in Major League Baseball history.
Learning from Cal’s persistence, Greg has redefined success as defining the industry and the ability to make a lasting impact on the world. Alyce, his human-enhanced artificial intelligence (AI) gifting platform, is doing just that.
Its corporate gifting prowess drives one-to-one engagement, offering its users human-to-human engagement analysis. Alyce also delivers an ROI-focused customer experience and delight data to its users for strategy improvement.
Spiff
- Founders: Jeron Paul
- Equity raised: $62 million
- Lead investors: Hanno Renner, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Salesforce Ventures, Alexi Robichaux
Jeron Paul, Spiff founder, and CEO, is one of the greatest minds in the growing SaaS scene. He is an accomplished entrepreneur who, besides Spiff, has also founded four other successful businesses, including Capshare, now part of Thomson Reuters.
Utah’s Wasatch Innovation Network (WIN) has placed Jeron Paul on the WIN100 list, recognizing him as one of the state’s leading top entrepreneurs. In addition, fast Company has named Spiff, his disruptive commission management platform, one of the world’s most innovative businesses. G2 has also credited Spiff as one of the world’s fastest-growing software ventures.
Chili Piper
- Founders: Alina Vandenberghe, Nicolas Vandenberghe
- Equity raised: $54.4 million
- Lead investors: G Squared, Gradient Ventures, Base10 Partners
When Alina Vandenberghe and her husband Nicolas found Chili Piper in 2016, they took the road less traveled. These visionaries kept their contact form scheduling and streamlining platform operations fully remote.
Over time, Chili Piper has expanded to a 220-workforce operation across 40 countries. The secret sauce is putting their employees first through benefits such as flexible work hours.
Get Accept
- Founders: Samir Smajic, Carl Carell, Mathias Thulin, Jonas Blanck,
- Equity raised: $28.7 million
- Lead investors: Bessemer Venture Partners, BootstrapLabs, Y Combinator
“I have a firm belief that the most important thing to build scalable organizations is a strong culture and full alignment in the mission and vision of the company”, says Carl Carell, the Get Accept co-founder.
To this end, Get Accept, a digital dales room platform that powers remote selling experiences, has a laser eye focus on its happiness ratings.
They, for instance, ensure that all user questions receive an answer in a minute or two.
“We measure every conversation or ask people to rate every conversation,” says Carl Carell, speaking of Get Accept’s success in generating authentic buying experiences for its users.
Equity Bee
- Founders: Soren Barzilai, Mody Radashkovich, Oded Golan
- Equity raised: 85.3 million
- Lead investors: Group 11, LocalGlobe, Greenfield Partners
“As a serial entrepreneur who’s been part of the startup sphere for the last 15 years from all its aspects as an employee and a founder, I have witnessed countless colleagues and friends lose out on a significant part of their compensation because they didn’t understand the unclear stock options system”, says Soren Barzilai, Equity Bee co-founder.
Soren Barzilai, Mody Radashkovich, and Oded Golan are childhood friends. In 2018, they launched Equity Bee out of compassion for their friends and colleagues who experience difficulties investing in the options market.
Equity Bee connects its users to accredited investors who only receive a fraction of profits from the future value of the user’s stock. By 2020, their investor community, composed of high net individuals, funds, and family offices, had scaled by 700%.
Spekit
- Founders: Zari Zahra, Melanie Fellay
- Equity raised: $60 million
- Lead investors: Craft Ventures
Spekit, a learning platform, launched in 2018. However, it rose out of obscurity in 2020, as its just-in-time-learning features became a must-have in the pandemic season. Businesses required an easy and seamless employee onboarding and training platform, and Spekit was right there waiting in the wings.
“I think the shift was inevitable. When you explain that instead of people having to look for information, it’s right in your workflow where you need it… that just makes sense,” says Melanie Fellay of Spekit’s change of fortunes.
Melanie came across the Spekit idea while working as a real estate product manager. She noticed that most employees had difficulty learning and using the new tools and technologies the company provided them. So she went on to develop a tech-driven learning platform pitching it to colleague Zari Zahra.
Novi Connect
- Founders: Kimberly Shenk
- Equity raised: $51.8 million
- Lead investors: Greylock, Defy Partners, Tiger Global
Kimberly Shenk launched Novi Connect, a B2B marketplace for the product development supply chain, in 2019. Before Novi was her first company, NakedPoppy, a sustainable and safe ingredients beauty product company.
Her operations at NakedPoppy came across headwinds such as a lack of transparency on ingredient access, leading to the development of Novi Connect. As a result, Novi modernizes the product supply chain and has amassed hundreds of customers, including Target and Sephora.
