Fifty Tech Startups You Should Know


Special Report: Best Tech Startups

Slide Show: The Next Google?

BusinessWeek and market researcher YouNoodle have teamed up to identify 50 tech startups flying under the radar. Our list includes fledgling tech companies—most started in 2005 and later—from the U.S., China, India, Israel, and Russia that are attracting some early buzz and are poised to grow beyond their regional or niche-market origins.


Click column heading once to reorder from highest to lowest. Click twice to reorder from lowest to highest.
Company
Headquarters
YouNoodle Score*
Total Funding
(in Millions of Dollars)
Year Funded
CEO

Zynga  San Francisco  97 39.0 2007 Mark Pincus
Yola  San Francisco  60 25.0 2007 Vinny Lingham
Xobni  San Francisco  48 14.6 2006 Jeff Bonforte
Tudou  Shanghai  96 84.5 2005 Gary Wang
TokBox  San Francisco  51 14.0 2007 Ian Small
TheFind  Mountain View, Calif.  66 26.0 2006 Siva Kumar
SynapSense  Folsom, Calif.  26 11.0 2006 Peter Van Deventer
Spotify  Stockholm  51 20.0 2006 Daniel Ek
Sonico  Buenos Aires  91 4.3 2007 Rodrigo Teijeiro
Slide  San Francisco  91 58.0 2005 Max Levchin
Sermo  Cambridge, Mass.  29 37.5 2006 Daniel Palestrant
SecondMarket  New York  31 N/A2004 Barry E. Silbert
Scribd  San Francisco  91 12.8 2007 Trip Adler
RockYou  Redwood City, Calif.  89 68.5 2006 Lance Tokuda
Raydiance  Petaluma, Calif.  24 20.0 2005 Barry Schuler
QueBarato  Brazil  65 6.0 2007 Pending confirmation
Proclivity Systems  New York  16 6.2 2006 Sheldon Gilbert
Positive Energy  Arlington, Va.  22 15.5 2007 Daniel Yates
Pelago  Seattle  25 22.4 2006 Jeff Holden
PBworks  San Mateo, Calif.  57 2.5 2005 Jim Groff
Palantir Technologies  Palo Alto, Calif.  31 36.7 2004 Alex Karp
OpenDNS  San Francisco  93 2.5 2005 David Ulevitch
Ning  Palo Alto, Calif.  96 104.0 2004 Gina Bianchini
Nila  Los Angeles  22 0.6 2004 Jim Sanfilippo
Monitise  London  21 19.0 2004 Alastair Lukies
Modu  Kfar-Saba, Israel  27 85.0 2007 Dov Moran
Mochi Media  San Francisco  37 14.0 2005 George Garrick
Metaweb Technologies  San Francisco  42 57.0 2005 Thomas Layton
Loopt  Mountain View, Calif.  48 13.3 2005 Sam Altman
Livescribe  Oakland, Calif.  30 18.6 2007 Jim Marggraff
KupiVIP  Moscow  48 11.0 2008 Oskar Hartmann
Kosmix  Mountain View, Calif.  60 55.0 2005 Venky Harinarayan
Komli Media **  Mumbai, India  83 7.0 2006 Amar Goel
Justin.tv  San Francisco  81 4.0 2006 Michael Siebel
Jajah  Mountain View, Calif.  68 28.0 2005 Trevor Healy
Inrix  Kirkland, Wash.  29 31.1 2004 Bryan Mistele
Ibibo  Gurgaon, Haryana, India  77 N/A2007 Ashish Kashyap
Huddle.net  London  38 4.0 2006 Alaisdair Mitchell
Fusion-io  Salt Lake City  23 66.5 2006 David Bradford
Fon  Madrid  44 48.0 2005 Martin Varsavsky
Evernote  Mountain View, Calif.  60 13.5 2005 Phil Libin
Etsy  Brooklyn, N.Y.  91 31.6 2005 Maria Thomas
Daylife  New York  67 8.3 2007 Upendra Shardanand
Cotendo  San Carlos, Calif.  12 7.0 2008 Ronni Zehavi
Cloudera  Burlingame, Calif.  22 11.0 2008 Michael Olson
Boxee  New York  36 4.0 2008 Avner Ronen
Bloom Energy  Sunnyvale, Calif.  22 N/A2002 K.R. Sridhar
Better Place  Palo Alto, Calif.  33 200.0 2007 Shai Agassi
AdMob  San Mateo, Calif.  76 47.2 2006 Omar Hamoui
Adconion Media Group  London  64 80.0 2005 T. Tyler Moebius

*A YouNoodle Score is a measurement, on a scale of 0 to 100, of a startup's progress as an early-stage company. Typically, a 0-15 company is just getting started, a 30-60 company has experienced some very strong growth (through traffic, funding, or revenue), and a 90-plus company is a strong IPO or acquisition candidate. The score is based on a sophisticated algorithm using information from thousands of online sources: traffic, level of mainstream media coverage, funding, blogosphere activity, and other key factors.

** Komli Media — First Round Funding Only

N/A — Funding Amount Not Disclosed/Not Available