During the first couple of weeks of January I am going to be in the Silicon Valley visiting VCs and startups. The trip is organized by Ken Morse (founder of 3Com) and Ed Roberts as a requirement of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program.
I have passed the trip organizers a list of companies I am interested in visiting. The criteria to select companies was to be small and to have received funding recently. Based on these criteria, I selected 15 companies that I have been following during the last year, are based in Silicon Valley, are innovative, and I firmly believe that they are going to be successful. These is my list ranked by preference (the information I provide about each company may not be exhaustive or accurate):
1. Loopt
Market: Location systems for mobile handsets
Founders: Stanford drop outs
Investors: Sequoia, YCombinator (2006)
2. Ulocate
Market: Mobile location applications
Founders: former executives of Mapquest
Investors: Venrock (founded: 2007)
3. Weatherbill
Market: weather risk management
Founders: former Google executives
Investors: Index Ventures, New Enterprise Association, Atomico (founded: 2006)
4. Meraki
Market: Wifi routers for inexpensive mesh networking
Founders: MIT PhD students, ex VMWare people
Investors: Sequoia, Google (founded: 2006)
Market: Software to optimize the distribution of media over the internet (really unique)
Founders: former CEO of Aptiva , former COO of Oneworld , academics who invented Raptor Codes
Investors: Granite Ventures, Matrix Partners (founded: 2003)
6. Opentable
Market: restaurant reservation network
Founders: former Amazon and Paypal executives
Investors: Benchmark (founded: 1999)
7. Prosper.com
Market: Marketplace to borrow and lend money
Founders: founder and CEO of e-loan
Investors: Benchmark, Accel, Fidelity (founded: 2006)
Market: Mobile advertising
Founder: founder of Meru Networks
Investors: Morgenthaler, Carlyle (founded: 2005)
9. Yelp
Reviews about what is great (recommendations about restaurants, dentists, etc.); user generated local reviews
Founders: former PayPal executives
Investors: Benchmark (founded: 2004)
10. Turn.com
Market: Automatic targeting ad market (cost per action)
Founder: former CEO of Altavista and Excite
Investors: NVP, Trident (founded: 2006)
11. Brightroll
Market: Monetization of video advertising
Founders: former Plaxo executives
Investors: Adams Street Capital, KPG Ventures (founded: 2006)
12. Successmetrics
Market: Actionable Analytics applications for sales organizations
Founders: former Siebel executives
Investors: Sequoia, Hummber Winblad
13. Ambarella
Market: Chipsets for HD video (for video cameras, etc.)
Founders: ex-Sun Microsystem, ex-C-cube chipset architects
Investors: Benchmark, Matrix Partners
14. Tropos Networks
Market: Wi-fi equipment for high capacity, high quality metro mesh networks
Founders: fromer CEO of Lycos, Ellacoya
Investors: Benchmark, Intel Capital
15. StormExchange
Market: manage risk of adverse weather
Founders:
Investors: Venrock (founded: 2007)
I think I saw you at the Webinno. Anyways what is your interest in the start-up side? I ask because my firmworks to create start-ups pretty much at the back of envelop point here in cambridge and Sloan and HBSers, well y'all are where I look to. Take care
mark@bangventures.com
Posted by: F. Mark Modzelewski | December 05, 2007 at 11:36 AM