Startups to observe in 2022: What can you learn from their success?

According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, approximately 137,000 new startups are established every day, each trying to outdo its competitor while proffer innovative solutions to solve diverse global challenges. Unfortunately, recent research has revealed that about 90% of these startups end up as failed businesses, with about 20% failing in their first year. Here is a short and sweet explanation of why startups failed most of the time.

And while every startup deserves some recognition and award for taking the bold step to be competitive and be a problem-solver, we would be focusing on a section of the top 10% who have proven to be successful or have shown great signs of scaling already.

We appreciate the efforts of every startup and wish them success, but for this episode, we can’t mention all of them doing great things. So we have created a list of startups to watch out for in 2021. No disrespect to those that did not make our list; it doesn’t mean they are not doing good enough but based on our research, these are the startups we found interesting in 2021.

So let’s jump right in.

CNOTE

It is a rarity to find women founders and cofounders of startups, especially in the technology niche. For a little emphasis, a reported research revealed that women-founded 20% of global startups, and CNote is one of such successful rarities.

CNote, founded and led by women, is a technology-based financial platform that facilitates investment in economic inclusion.

The company closed an overpriced $ 3 million private funding to expand its space scope and create a mark in a rapidly growing social community. ManchesterStory led this funding round with Lateral Capital, SixThirty Ventures, Clearstone Capital, Artemis Fund, and H/L Ventures acting as additional investments.

In a bid to shorten onboarding time for community investments, CNote has taken due diligence in creating a suite of tools to make community investing seamless and is also underwriting new technologies. Doing all these ensure that they maintain very strict underwriting standards and ensure appropriate risk controls. 

In a statement by Berman, before CNote’s funding, there’s been a huge difficulty in sourcing for specific cause investments like gender equity, and there was also a strenuous and lengthy process involved; however, presently, CNote’s platform makes it possible for investors to find, deploy and also service community investments as fast as possible and through this funding, there is a drastic reduction in barriers to investing in American communities.

Some recognition bestowed on CNote over the last 18 months includes “Emerging Impact Manager in the 2020 Impact Assets 50 List” and as the “Best Alternative Investments Platform by Finovate 2020”.

CNote entered a partnership with MasterCard In October of 2020, with Mastercard making a $20 million-dollar commitment into CNote’s cash management solution, the Promise Account. Due to the pandemic, the company recently launched the Rapid Response Fund to help communities recover through low-cost but versatile long-term capital.

CNote, since its inception, has created and maintained over 4000 jobs, invested over 50% capital in BIPOC-led small businesses, and invested over 40% of capital in women-led businesses, which is 8x the national average.

With CNote, institutions and individuals in financially underserved communities, especially across America, find it less difficult to make economic prosperity-based investments. These investments helped women and people of color who, through these investments, were able to start businesses, create jobs, fund other community-based projects, construct affordable housing, and so on.

There are basically two principles on which CNote was founded: that everyone can play a part in building an equal world and also that all deserve an equal opportunity to pursue financial freedom simply by changing where they invest and hold c.ash.

With decades of experience working in finance, CNote was created by two women, Catherine Berman and Yuliya Tarasova, who in their past roles have witnessed the chasm created by a gap in wealth gap, especially after the great financial crisis of 2008

Spacemaker

Shelter is one of the necessities of living, and humanity would always require buildings; to live, for business, etc. Spacemaker is redefining real-estate and infrastructure development by employing modern technology, including artificial intelligence, to ensure a safer environment even while we build. With the Spacemaker solution, infrastructural development can happen at a more accelerated pace, thereby meeting the huge demands of the 21st century.

Founded by Carl Christensen and Håvard Haukeland, the Oslo-based startup seeks to design sustainable infrastructure that may help businesses thrive while reducing pollution. They achieve this by deploying AI technology that enables clients to identify ways to optimize the potential of a construction site or real property.

Although launched in 2016, the innovative startup has grown exponentially and was only recently valued at over $240 million by Autodesk, among other fundings.

Competitive edge

Providing tech-based and novel solutions in a high-demand industry (Real-estate)

Team structure

Spacemaker currently has five employees, including the co-founders.

Technology Stack

Spacemaker AI is currently employing 24 technologies on its website. SPF, IPv6, and CDNJS are among them.

Streem

In today’s hyper-commercialized world, customer support largely determines the sustenance of a business or company. If your customer support is not efficient, proactive, and caring, you will be losing out on a huge market. Streem is stepping up to the challenge to help companies and businesses surmount their customer inefficiencies while also helping customers get quick solutions to their product-based problems by employing AI technology.

With Streem, consumers can identify faults using their smartphone’s camera, and your employees can assist them using AR indications in real-time.

Owners

Ryan Fink; CEO, Co-founder

Sean Adkinson; CTO, Co-founder

Competitive edge

Utilizing a combination of AI, AR, and machine learning to identify customer-related issues, thereby enhancing customer relationships.

Team Structure

Streem currently has nine people under its employ, including the co-founders.

Technology Stack

The start-up uses HTML, jQuery, and Google Analytics.

ODAIA.ai

ODAIA.ai is helping businesses scale by providing customer insights and data using AI technology. The startup, which was founded in 2018, is led by a team of professionals, including; entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists, etc. ODAIA is merging information extraction, customer experience modeling, and AI to provide enterprise firms with sales and marketing insights and operational automation solutions.

The Odaia startup was formed at the University of Toronto. Her solution is trusted by some of the world’s top organizations. At writing, they had raised $5.6 million in fundings.

Owners

Helen Kontozopoulos, Philip Poulidis

Competitive edge

A novel solution in analyzing consumer character and gathering insights utilizing AI and ML.

Team Structure

While seven people make up the leadership team, the startup is recorded to have two employees.

Technology Stack

Data is currently using 24 technologies for its website. They include Viewport Meta, SSL by Default, and LetsEncrypt.

Kindbody

In recent years we have seen huge possibilities with the collaboration between health and technology, and really we haven’t even seen the best of it yet. Kindbody is one of such innovative health tech startups that leverage technology to provide better and more efficient healthcare services for women.

The startup aims to provide modern women with fertility solutions and therapies. It provides a comprehensive variety of treatments, including intrauterine insemination, in-vitro fertilization, donor support, egg freezing, and embryo freezing, to help women enhance their entire health.

Founders

Gina Bartasi, Joanne Schneider.

Competitive edge

The startup runs complete online support alongside its in-clinic services.

Team Structure

Kindbody has eight verifiable employee profiles and one person on the board of advisors.

Technology Stack

The startup’s technology includes viewport meta, mobile compatibility, and SPF, among others.

Clumio

When it comes to database management, cloud storage is the in-thing. From private individuals to big organizations, people are storing up their data in the cloud because it is safer, and clumio is making it even easier to do this.

Clumio is a third-party tool that helps you avoid the complications and expenses of using third-party cloud backup services. Clumio’s innovative backup technology is revolutionizing the SaaS sector. Firms don’t have to worry about creating in-house backups. Clumio’s system is compatible with native AWS servers.

Founders

Kaustubh Patil, Mike Speiser, Poojan Kumar, Woon Ho Jung

Competitive edge

Innovative SaaS solution that makes cloud storage easy, secure and inexpensive

Team Structure

Clumio has fourteen employees and seven board members.

Technology Stack

Among the technology services used, HTML5, Google Analytics, and jQuery are quite popular.

Clumio has raised a total of $186 million in funding since its launch.

Meatable

With the global index for food insecurity growing exponentially and the arguments on animal cruelty gaining momentum, one dutch company has taken the mantle of innovatively allaying our fears for a bleak future. Meatable is a startup that produces and sells lab-grown meat to the market instead of farm-bred meat. In the natural order, producing farm-bred meat will span three years. But at Meatable, a single cell is collected from animals and then subjected to scientific procedures to cultivate meat within the confines of a lab, all within the space of three weeks. Though lab-grown, the meat still retains all the taste, health benefits, and safety of farm-bred meat.

With Mutable, the global demands for meat can be sufficiently met while saving animals from the cruelty of slaughterhouses.

Do you crave meat that doesn’t pinch on your conscience? Mutable got your cravings protected.

Founders

Krijn de Nood;Co founder & CEO

Daan Luining; Co founder & CTO

Mark Kotter; Cofounder & Scientific Advisor

Competitive edge

An innovative shift from the consumption of farm-bred meat to lab-grown meat to satisfy the high demand for meat and eliminate animal cruelty.

Team Structure

Mutable has 13 Executives on its board and has around 51 employees.

Technology stack

Mutable utilizes 21 technologies on its websites, including iPhone/mobile compatible, SFP, and Viewport Viewport Meta.

Kitopi

Kitopi is the perfection of kitchen activities and technological application. Kitopi startup is a cloud-managed kitchen platform that utilizes smart kitchens to deliver top-notch cooking services for restaurant and F&B brands. The kitopi’s idea allows restaurants to focus on building and expanding their customer base, brand visibility, and marketing while outsourcing their food preparation and delivery operations.

Founders

Mohammed Ballout; Co-founder, CEO

Salman Darken; Cofounder, Chief technology & product officer

Andres Arena; Co-founder and chief property officer.

Bader Ataya; Co-founder & Chief growth officer

Competitive edge

Utilizes smart kitchens and expert chefs to scale time and quality of food, thus allowing onboard restaurants to focus on scaling their brands.

Team structure

Kitopi has 29 executives on its leadership board and boasts of over 1,000employees.

Technology stack

Kitopi utilizes 11 technologies on its platform, including Google Fonts, Google Analytics, and HTML.

Conclusion

One thing is common among all the startups that made our list, and that is their drive to be innovative and proffer solutions to problems affecting the globe. In 2020, startups created over three million jobs in the US alone. They are not only solving social problems; they are also solving economic problems by providing jobs.

While you may not need to create and execute a new idea from scratch, identifying problems or inefficiencies in existing systems can be enough to change the world.