Celebrating our 30 Under 30 Founders

Celebrating the six co-founders from five different portfolio companies, who were selected for this year’s prestigious Forbes 30 under 30 Awards. With an acceptance rate of under 4%, the Forbes 30 Under 30 is harder to get into than Harvard or Stanford. Forbes utilizes their leading reporters to uncover the nominees, who are then selected by a all-star group of judges from their respective fields, as well as under 30 alums. We’re expecting great things from these driven, young entrepreneurs.

Enterprise Technology

Judging the enterprise tech companies were Douglas Leone of Sequoia Capital, Maran Nelson of Clara Labs, and the cofounder and CEO of Twilio, Jeff Lawson.

Nick Candito (29), Cofounder, Progressly

In 2014, Candito and Clarence Wooten founded Progressly in order to centralize and streamline the entirety of a business’ operations, regardless of the type of company. Progressly also provides its own business process strategies for its clients to study, use and share. Since founding, Progressly has raised $11 million in funding and has grown to 31 employees. Candito was inspired to become an entrepreneur largely because of his grandfather, a successful manager.

Andrew Maas (29), Cofounder, Roam Analytics

Maas, from Columbia, Maryland, earned his PhD from Stanford University in computer science, focusing on deep neural networks in speech recognition. In 2013, Maas cofounded Roam Analytics, a machine learning analytics platform that aims to transform existing industries, especially life sciences, using artificial intelligence. The startup has raised about $20 million in funding from investors such as StartX and Formation 8 (now 8VC) and has 29 employees.

Beyang Liu (27) & Quinn Slack (28), Cofounders, Sourcegraph

In 2013, Slack, from Evanston, Illinois, and Liu, from Zhengzhou, China cofounded Sourcegraph, which makes code intelligence software to help developers be more productive. Sourcegraph, which has been billed the “Google for code,” has raised more than $20 million in funding to date and has grown to 25 employees. Sourcegraph has 300,000 product users, and 800 million people use products that have been built using the service.

Consumer Technology

This year the judges for the consumer tech companies were Steve Anderson of Baseline Ventures, Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures, and the cofounder of Stripe, John Collision.

Alexandra Zatarain (27), Cofounder, Eight

Zatarian’s startup, Eight, takes the online mattress-selling business one step further with a smart mattress that tracks your sleep lets you adjust each side for temperature and more. Prior to launching the San Francisco-based startup, Zatarian worked in public relations in New York City.

Keller Rinaudo (29) Cofounder, Zipline*

Rinaudo is the CEO of Zipline, a startup that builds drones and uses them to deliver medical supplies in places like Rwanda. The company raised $25 million in a Nov. 2016 Series B round and is already airdropping blood bags and other medical necessities with drones it calls “Zips.”

*secondary transaction

Originally published at swayvc.com on January 8, 2017.