Fastest Growing Startups In 2022 (things you missed)
The COVID-19 pandemic made entrepreneurs more resilient and creative as well as exploded the stock prices of so many startups.
The startups on this list include some of the most exciting and brilliant ideas on opposite subjects like tech, food services, logistics, and education.
Preply
5-year search growth: 1900%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2012
Location: Brookline, Massachusetts
Funding: $50.6M (Series B)
Preply, an online language tutoring platform that has 10,000 tutors teaching 50 languages in 190 countries worldwide, has seen a threefold increase in interest in countries impacted by the virus sooner than others, such as Italy, Spain, and Germany, according to Preply CEO Kirill Bigai.
In the U.S. — its single largest market — it has seen the number of new customers double week over week. (Forbes)
Linktree
5-year search growth: 9600%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2016
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Funding: $165.7M (Series B)
Linktree is a freemium social media reference landing page developed by Alex Zaccaria, Anthony Zaccaria, and Nick Humphreys, headquartered in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia. Founded in 2016, it serves as a landing page for a person or company’s entire associated links in social media, which rarely allows linking to multiple sites. The site was inspired by the developers’ annoyance with social media that can’t allow multiple hyperlinks. (Wikipedia)
Lalamove
5-year search growth: 983%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2013
Location: Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Funding: $2.5B (Series F)
Lalamove was born to make on-demand delivery possible for everyone at the touch of a button. Through a single app, users could gain access to a wide fleet of suitable delivery vehicles helmed by professional drivers.
Lalamove has become the strategic partner for businesses of all sizes to solve their last-mile delivery issues. From independent brick and mortar stores to restaurants, retail outlets, and e-commerce companies, Lalamove helps businesses from a wide array of industries to scale and outsource deliveries based on their needs (lalamove.com)
OnlyFans
5-year search growth: 7900%
Search growth status: Regular
Year founded: 2016
Location: London, U.K.
Funding: Undisclosed
During the Covid-19 lockdowns, almost everybody caught wind of an explosive new platform called OnlyFans. Famous for raunchy content, endless memes, and putting power back in the hands of content creators, OnlyFans has been successful despite limited investor backing (mainly due to NSFW content).
Despite net revenue of $2.5B in 2022 and a dedicated user base of 7M fans per month, OnlyFans’ public image has prevented many larger investors from jumping in thus far. (explodingtopics.com)
Labster
5-year search growth: 771%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2011
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
Funding: $103.5M (Series C)
Labster is the world’s leading platform for virtual labs and science simulations. Students’ learning outcomes improve with Labster because we engage them with game-based elements that inspire them to explore science. Students then apply their knowledge to solve a real-world problem within the context of a story. Inside the 3D environment of an immersive simulation, students master curriculum-aligned theory, interact with advanced equipment, learn techniques and perform experiments.
The virtual science labs have been used by California State University, Harvard, Gwinnett Technical College, MIT, Exeter University, University of New Haven, Stanford, University of New England, Trinity College, University of Hong Kong, and Berkeley, among others internationally. (labster.com)
Oura Ring
5-year search growth: 5200%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2013
Location: Oulu, Finland
Funding: $148.3M (Series C)
Oura Ring is a Finnish health technology company, best known for the Oura Ring a smart ring used to track sleep and physical activity. The company was founded in 2013 by Petteri Lahtela, Kari Kivelä, and Markku Koskela. Harpreet Singh Rai was the CEO from 2018 until 2021 when he was replaced on an interim basis by Michael Chapp. In 2022, Tom Hale was appointed CEO.[2] The company is headquartered in Oulu, Finland, with other locations in Helsinki, Finland, and San Francisco, United States. The company raised its initial US$2.3 million seed funding in 2015 led by Lifeline Ventures, introduced the first-generation ring via Kickstarter in 2016, and launched the ring at the Slush tech conference in 2017. (Wikipedia)
Tailwind
5-year search growth: 488%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2012
Location: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Funding: $10.7M (Series B)
Pinterest and Instagram are loaded with content creators. Which makes standing out from the crowd hard to do. Tailwind’s visual creation platform is used by over 100,000 brands and influencers worldwide largely because it makes sticking out easier than attempting to create content from scratch. Automating the most annoying parts of the creation process like hashtagging, color schemes, and schedule lets brands focus on the idea behind the posts.
Over 1M small businesses like Article, Serena & Lily, Jenny Yoo, and even giants like Shopify utilize Tailwind. (explodingtopics.com)
Gumroad
5-year search growth: 181%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2012
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $16.1M (Equity Crowdfunding)
Gumroad is a self-publishing digital marketplace platform to sell digital services such as books, memberships, courses, and other digital services.(Wikipedia)
Printify
5-year search growth: 1400%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2015
Location: San Francisco, California
Funding: $54.1M (Series A)
Printify is a transparent print on-demand platform that makes it dead simple to work with multiple print providers all around the world to fulfill and send your products to your customers. (printify.com)
Melio
5-year search growth: 541%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2018
Location: New York, New York
Funding: $504M (Series D)
One of the banes of a small business’s existence is keeping the books, especially paying and invoicing vendors and contractors. Melio seamlessly syncs with Quickbooks and lets business owners create workflows that streamline the payment process. (explodingtopics.com)
Adalo
5-year search growth: 2866%
Search growth status: Exploding
Year founded: 2018
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
Funding: $9.8M (Series A)
Creating an app can seem like a scary task when you don’t know how to code or where to start. Luckily, Adalo is solving that problem with their seamless no-code app builder. Fresh off of a Series A funding round of $8M led by renowned Tiger Global, Adalo’s easy-to-use interface lets app creators drag and drop simple blocks to create their dream application without a single line of code. (explodingtopics.com)
