9 More Stellar Startups to Keep an Eye On
The Startup Program welcomes top-tier startups that have vision, drive, and the “special something” that lends to building the best companies in the world. We’re proud to have the following startups in our program and invite you to explore their offerings and services.
1. Tymit
Tom Davies, Head of Marketing
United Kingdom
Finance
tymit.com
Reinventing credit to make it honest, safe, and instant everywhere.
How Tymit Got Started
“The idea behind Tymit started from the belief of two brothers: Martín and Nico, that there should be a better way of financing purchases over time to manage a monthly budget than using credit cards or loans. As users themselves of consumer credit products, and from their professional experience in banking, they saw credit cards are very easy to use but offer a very poor experience when it comes to financing a purchase. Cards often have unclear pricing, lots of fees, and lack of features to keep balances under control. Alternatives like store loans require applying and running credit checks every time they are used and are not readily available in most places when needed.
After spending many years working with major high-street Banks, both founders were convinced that they could leverage the latest technology in cards and payments to offer a much better experience to the customer. One that is cheaper, more transparent, more flexible, and easily available anywhere when needed.
In the summer of 2017 Martín moved from New York to London to join Nico to start Tymit. Since then, Juan and an experienced team of engineers and designers joined the team. Together, they have rapidly built the technology behind Tymit entirely from scratch.”
On Overcoming a Challenge
“As a new credit product we’ve had to be very diligent about who we offer a Tymit account to. Both to protect the business from customer defaults and mitigate the risk of fraud. Upholding this high standard of due diligence, through an app only application process, has been one of our biggest challenges.
To overcome these challenges the development team at Tymit has worked tirelessly with our risk and operations teams, to ensure that we’ve constantly iterated on the product. We’ve focused on making the application process as smooth as possible, while ensuring we collect all the necessary data we need to assess an application.
The final piece of the puzzle was finding the right customers, to ensure that we limited the amount of declined applications. To overcome this our marketing team tested multiple digital channels, constantly A/B testing imagery, messaging and targeting to attract the right demographic.
Reinventing the credit card is not an easy task, but it’s one we are reveling in!”
Want to connect with Tymit? Email us to request an intro.
2. Top Digital Agency
Scott Coleman, COO
Croatia
Marketing & Advertising / Cloud Computing
topdigital.agency
A platform to post a project and hire the perfect digital agency.
How Top Digital Agency Got Started
“Goran and I were first introduced by a student of mine when I was a professor. But it wasn’t until we’d had dinner with our respective wives that we knew the partnership would work. I don’t think either of us have been that nervous for a dinner date in a long time, both knowing that the judgment of the other person’s wife would dictate whether we’d move forward or not. I actually think it’s a great early test for founders. It’s cliché to say that co-founders end up being like a married couple. Who better to help you decide if it will work than your spouses!”
On Their Favorite Success
“Winning our first international startup competition is something none of us will ever forget. We’d never pitched before and the team was still getting to know each other (not to mention our product). Goran (CEO) spent two days teaching me jargon so that my technical naivete wouldn’t get caught by any judges. But we were all just praying that they didn’t ask any tough questions.
Fortunately, we got through and somehow won the competition. We watched the sun set in Montenegro and then drove back to Zagreb overnight so we could celebrate with the team. It was the first time that we’d ever had real outside confirmation that we were onto something and it felt great.”
Want to connect with Top Digital Agency? Email us to request an intro.
3. Swit Technologies Inc.
Josh Lee, Founder & CEO
USA
Business Tools
swit.io
Brings teams together to communicate and manage tasks, wherever they are.
How Swit Got Started
“It was so frustrating to frequently go back and forth between chat and tasks. Stuff everywhere. No one on the same page. So, we built Swit to bring everything we need to get things done together in one convenient place. Swit is the perfect combination of Must-have tools to replace Slack and Trello/Asana at once.”
On Overcoming a Challenge
“Building a sellable product before finding a product market fit cost a lot more than expected. We had to constantly change our founding ideas, iterate the product, refactor codes again and again and finally got the solid product that self-sells, with great initial customer satisfaction. I thought we were too late to find our market fit with too much learning cost unnecessarily paid. But I learned that the time it took us to prove the hypothesis, identify the target persona, and crystallize the go-to-market (GTM) strategy, was nothing when compared how long it took the industry frontiers to reach the same KPI — user acquisition growth and product development.”
Want to connect with Swit? Email us to request an intro.
4. Delfast Inc.
Daniel Tonkopiy, Founder and CEO
Ukraine
Automotive
delfastbikes.com
Simply designed electric bikes designed to travel long distances.
How Delfast Got Started
“Delfast started with the dream to make the environment cleaner and the world a better place to live in. Daniel Tonkopiy and Serhii Denysenko founded the eco-delivery service in 2014 and started to deliver goods from the online stores with the speed of the pizza delivery. Three years of development of the own electric bikes for couriers brought the Delfast startup to the creation of the e-bike with the longest range in the world.” — Daniel Tonkopiy, Founder and CEO
On Overcoming a Challenge
“The hardest part of the delivery startup was to find an e-bike that could meet the needs of the couriers. 99.9% of the electric bikes that were available on the commercial market had the maximum range of 40 km (18–25 mi), while our couriers rode 150–200 km daily and did not have the time to recharge or swap the battery. Delfast’s goal was to create a vehicle that could go for 200 km (124 mi) on a single charge without pedaling. After a few prototypes, the team developed the powerful e-bike with the longest range in the world. We thus established the Guinness World Record: 367 km (234 miles) on a single charge with no pedal assistance.
Today Delfast manufacturers different bikes; our bestseller is the high-power Top 2.0 model with the maximum speed of 80 km/h (50 mph). Delfast also supplies the special TopCop modification to the Mexican Police and to many other customers around the world.”
Want to connect with Delfast? Email us to request an intro.
5. Quicket Solutions
Christiaan Burner, CEO
USA
SaaS
quicketsolutions.com
Delivers modern, secure, and affordable cloud-based solutions for sensitive government workloads.
How Quicket Got Started
“Quicket was founded at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign by Christiaan Burner and Akshay Singh. Through an internship, Christiaan had exposure to incredibly antiquated software and infrastructure used by state and local government that was inhibiting their ability to provide quality services to constituents. Christiaan and Akshay realized that there was an immense opportunity to build a big data platform that could eliminate manual data entry, automate workflows, and deliver higher quality services for everyone.”
On Overcoming a Challenge
“Govtech is traditionally a very challenging market because of the sales cycle and heavy lift required for implementations. However, by building a multi-tenant SaaS solution, we have demonstrated a substantial compression of the sales cycle and can implement in a fraction of the time, delivering a positive ROI immediately for our clients. Because of this, we have attracted industry veterans and other investors that see that Quicket has cracked the code of government and can rapidly and efficiently scale.”
Want to connect with Quicket? Email us to request an intro.
6. 8base
Albert Santalo, Founder and CEO
USA
Cloud Computing
8base.com
Platform and services for building powerful applications for startups and established organizations.
How 8base Got Started
“I started my career as an engineer and later became founder of two venture-backed SaaS companies. I had a vision for a platform that enabled entrepreneurs to bring their visions to life faster, better and more economically — allowing founders to retain more ownership and control of their ventures. From this, our a low-code development platform for building professional-grade software was born.”
On Overcoming a Challenge
“My previous companies raised a significant amount of capital. With 8base, I invested my own money and worked to bootstrap the company without venture capital. It’s harder in the short term to do it this way, but better in the long run.”
Want to connect with 8base? Email us to request an intro.
7. Valqari
Ryan Walsh, CEO & Co-Founder
Illinois, USA
Logistics / Transportation / Supply Chain
valqari.com
Uses a patented, automated device that gives drones a secure and convenient landing space when delivering traditional mail, packages, and parcel products.
How Valqari Got Started
“My co-founder, Alex Falesch, and I saw the commercial applications of drone delivery in 2013. We began working on our patent applications immediately followed by proof of concept prototyping. As our development had reached a point where we were ready to engage the market, we spun Valqari up in 2017.
Alex and I have started many companies together, so it was just a natural continuation of what we have been doing for over a decade. We assembled a development road map and an initial core team to begin testing and commercializing our technology.” — Ryan Walsh, CEO & Co-Founder
On Overcoming a Challenge
“One of the toughest challenges was finding experts in a field that didn’t technically exist. Often times we found very knowledgeable people in IoT, Drones and Logistics, but they lacked the vision that we are trying to achieve of combining all of those industries within our solution.
I remember actually being laughed out of someone’s office in 2016 because they had thought drones were still two decades away from being an achievable technology. That lack of insight into what was possible was very discouraging initially, but we found comfort in the vast ocean of opportunities available. There was a time when cars and trains were viewed the same way. We knew our product was going to change the way goods are delivered and realized that we needed to find people that saw the same future we were trying to build.”
Want to connect with Valqari? Email us to request an intro.
8. Wrisk
Darius Kumana, Co-Founder/CPO
United Kingdom
Finance
wrisk.co
Launches and scales digital insurance solutions.
How Wrisk Got Started
“Wrisk was founded by Niall Barton — the insurance guy and Darius Kumana — the technology guy who met at a dinner. They agreed that there had to be a better way to do insurance and shared a vision of how it ought to be: simple, personal, and transparent.”
On Overcoming a Challenge
“Developing products with our partners is key to our business. One challenge we have faced in working with incumbents and global corporates is the time it takes to make decisions. This impacts if we should start a certain piece of work or other key decisions on how to best deploy precious time and resource.
To help us, we have come up with our own scoring method, which we call the ‘betting table’ this process allows a cross-section of the team to analyse all the information available at a given time to make decisions, underpinned by our strategic goals on what to prioritise. We don’t always have all the information we need, so collectively we decide on what we take a ‘bet’ on. This approach has certainly helped us keep focus in a fast-moving environment.”
Want to connect with Wrisk? Email us to request an intro.
9. Activechat
Andrew Ganin, Founder & CEO
USA
AI / Automation / Chat
activechat.ai
Conversational AI and customer service automation.
How Activechat Got Started
I failed to use competitor products so we decided to build our own.
On Overcoming a Challenge
We’ve made it to the #1 product in appsumo.com history ($510,000 in sales) during our public launch, but this was the biggest mistake we ever made. Spent 6 months fixing that “lifetime deal of the year” consequences and building a steady conversion path.
Want to connect with Activechat? Email us to request an intro.
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