Seattle has one of the country’s richest startup cultures. More than a few companies born in Seattle, like DocuSign and Redfin, have grown into become well-known brands.
The city is showing no signs of slowing down, either.
Check out these 25 Seattle startups that continue to do great work to improve their industries and the communities they serve. (NOTE: If you are considering launching a start-up you may be interested in this great guide to market research for startups from our friends at PeopleFish)
Cozy
Cozy is a B2C platform that helps landlords manage their rentals digitally. The software can collect rent checks, sort through applications and use screening tools to conduct background and credit checks. Cozy is used by more than 100,000 landlords in more than 13,000 cities. As long as you have an internet connection, you can use Cozy.
CrowdStreet
CrowdStreet is a hub for real estate investment crowdfunding. CrowdStreet helps companies get the funding they need for real estate projects while reducing the risks to investors by spreading the burden.
Its members typically invest around $45,000 per offering, but can invest as little as $10,000. CrowdStreet currently has 92 successful current real estate investments funded with an average cost of $30 million per offering.
TRED
TRED is an automotive marketplace where customers can buy and sell their cars through a trusted vetting process. Sellers must complete identity checks, vehicle condition checks, vehicle history checks and other verification steps to prove that the car quality and price is appropriate, which helps buyers know they’re getting a good deal.
Auction Edge
While Auction Edge also works with the automotive industry, its focus is on the specialty auction community. It has more than 34,000 active dealers within its software and runs more than 100 auctions daily. This helps cars move faster and through a more secure transaction platform.
Doxo
Doxo is a B2C company that aggregates more than 40,000 companies to allow customers to access their bills in one place. Instead of logging into multiple interfaces to make payments and check due dates, Doxo creates a high-level overview to let customers know when bills are due.
Its encrypted system allows customers to make payments securely from the app, so they only have to go to one place to pay their bills.
InDemand Interpreting
As the United States becomes an increasingly diverse country, the need for multilingual medical professionals is increasing. Unfortunately, it’s not always possible to find a doctor who is fluent in the native tongue of all of his or her patients.
InDemand Interpreting solves this problem by hiring interpreters who specialize in the medical industry and connecting them through video to hospitals. This gives the doctor the right information while making the patients more comfortable.
Point Inside
The team at Point Inside works with massive retailers such as Target and Lowe’s Home Improvement to improve in-store app experiences. Customers can make lists before they go and look up exactly where items are in the store.
When they’re inside the store, customers can see which items are closest so they don’t have to backtrack when shopping. This makes the shopping experience easier — especially when customers are faced with endless aisles and thousands of products to choose from.
ExtraHop
ExtraHop is one of the top names in real-time IT analytics. Through cloud-based machine learning, its tools help IT managers and CIOs quickly understand their IT environment and how to troubleshoot any existing problems. ExtraHop currently analyzes more than 3,600 metrics over 50 protocols. Instead of waiting for reports, companies can check the status of their IT structures in real time.
BrandVerity
Used by marketing and legal departments alike, BrandVerity tracks the presence of online ads and branded content to ensure your company is in compliance and only showing what you want. It can identify and remove unauthorized ads from appearing on branded paid search terms, ensure ads and content meet regulatory standards, and highlight non-compliant content on the web.
Rival IQ
Rival IQ is an analytics tool that helps brands track their social, SEO and website performance. One of its most valuable assets is its comparison data to other industry leaders. This allows companies to track trends and understand whether they’re part of industry changes or outliers experiencing problems.
Placed
Placed is a marketing analytics and insights tool that helps brands understand what happens when their customers go offline. This helps digital marketers know how their customers interact with their online ads and what makes them go into the store. Placed also handles various attribution models for analysis and affiliate links.
Highspot
Highspot works with sales teams through the lead generation process to a completed acquisition to help them better understand their customers and what they need to move potential customers deeper into the funnel. Along with intelligent recommendations, Highspot offers content scoring and advanced analytics to let sales teams do a deep dive on their prospective clients.
Koru
By identifying good culture fits along with high performing employees, Koru is able to help businesses fill empty positions and streamline the interview process. Its customers report a 30–60 percent increase in high performing hires through its software, which is what happens when companies follow the Koru motto of hiring for “grit over grades.”
Textio
Another platform that companies can use to improve their hiring process is Textio. Textio is an augmented writing platform that makes a quantitative promise that if you use the product and get a high score, you will see 25% more candidates qualified enough to interview, 23% more women apply, and you will fill roles two weeks faster. Textio has collected over 250 million job posts and their outcomes, and the predictive engine finds the language patterns that have worked and provides guidance to improve your job post.
Limeade
In 2016, Limeade was named one of Washington’s Best Workplaces by the Puget Sound Business Journal. Limeade is a corporate wellness technology company that works to drive employee engagement to create happier and healthier workers. The company knows that happy employees are productive employees, and organizations thrive when management invests in wellness.
Shiftboard
Shiftboard was recently named the Best Employee Shift Planning Software of 2017 by PC Magazine. Shiftboard is able to scale to work with companies ranging from 25 employees to 20,000 with shift alerts, real time updates and digital schedule access. This makes management easier and reduces the number of no shows from last-minute schedule changes.
Panopto
Panopto is also a B2B tool to help companies streamline their internal content sharing processes, but its primary focus is on video storage and sharing. Human resource teams can store training or onboarding videos on the interface, while marketing teams can stream events and share promotional content. Some call it an internal YouTube for businesses.
AnswerDash
When browsing a website, 72 percent of users don’t want assisted service if they have a question, but 57 percent of users abandon the site when they can’t find an answer. AnswerDash is looking to improve customer retention by providing common answers to questions without driving customers to a FAQ page. This allows customers to get answers where they need them without the frustration of customer reps or internal search results.
Skilljar
Skilljar also offers a customer retention tool with its training and onboarding software. The company typically works with B2B companies and other software providers that need to provide training to customers and clients on its tools. It can also help with lead generation through tutorials and digital walkthroughs.
MightyCall
The team at MightyCall works with entrepreneurs who use their personal devices to communicate with customers. Brands can get a branded vanity number (like 555-234-COOL), record a professional greeting for customers and prevent customers from reaching their private numbers. This creates a professional look while maintaining the work-life balance small business owners struggle to find.
EnergySavvy
The team at EnergySavvy works specifically to improve the online customer experience of utilities companies. It provides personalized customer insights, creates suggestions for users and works to improve customer engagement. Almost 40 utility and state programs use EnergySavvy to connect with customers digitally.
Sensoria
Sensoria creates smart shirts and socks to track physical performance — data that’s then sent to your smartphone. AI provides coaching and dashboard training based on metrics picked up from the apparel and fitness history. This gives athletes a personal trainer, even when working out alone.
Vicis
Americans are passionate about football, but the more we learn about the long-term effects of head trauma on athletes, the more we want changes in the game. Vicis is working to develop new football helmet technology to reduce the impact forces that can lead to concussions. This startup is a combination of medicine and engineering to protect youth athletes, college students and pros.
Glympse
Glympse is a B2C app that lets users share their locations with friends and set how long they can see where they are. If you’re running late or stuck in traffic, you can send others your location and they can track your progress until you arrive. Glympse was named one of TIME’s top 50 apps and the company has partnered with brands like Ford, Volvo and Verizon.
Peach
Founded in the Greater Seattle Area, Peach has expanded to Chicago, Boston and San Diego. It’s a food delivery service that specializes in the lunch hour by texting a daily menu to customers and taking their orders in the morning. Every day, there’s a different food option — from Southern cooking to traditional Vietnamese.
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Since then my team and I have published over 2,500 long-form articles for SaaS and HR Technology companies all over the world and engaged with over 20K influencers to promote this content.
I’d be happy to chat with you about anything and everything we have learned along that journey. Please don’t hesitate to reach out!
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