10 Hottest Startups From Austin, Texas. Do You Know Them?

Being a capital of the second-largest state in U.S. gives you a lot of advantages and Austin makes great use of these. Tons of new startups pop up in the city every year, many of them being true innovators in their industries.

Austin’s success is surely fuelled up by the SXSW event, taking place every year in mid-March. Media and tech leaders, musicians and filmmakers, politicians, wealthy businessmen, and just random people – all they attend South by Southwest to share their knowledge while catching up with all the latests tech innovations. All this brings huge piles of money to Austin, making the startup scene striving.

Cerebri AI

AI is undoubtedly one of the hottest business trends with 15% of companies currently using it, but an additional 31% having it on agenda during the upcoming 12 months. Considering that, it’s not a surprise, that AI-powered startups are on the wave. Cerebri AI is aiming to support automotive and financial sector in mining meaningful insights from data.

Website: cerebriai.com

Founder: Jean Belanger

Round of funding: Series B

Funding: $16.4M

Convey

Convey found its market in one of the toughest battlefields of modern e-commerce – logistics. The company offers business software to track and analyze logistics and deliveries. A special emphasis is put on the visibility of the last mile delivery and ability to track the packages in real time.

The logistics is considered the spine of the e-commerce, so the company is tackling a serious issue.  According to Statista, up to 41% of customers expect the online retailers to offer super-local deliveries (no more than 3 hours of waiting) while only 24% of companies offer such a service at the moment.

Website: getconvey.com

Founder: Dan Bebout

Funding: $25.6M

Round of funding: Series B

Dropoff

Delivery seems to be a serious thing in Austin, considering the successful startups emerging from the state of Texas’ capital city. Dropoff is the one to tackle this nasty need to transport the pack of flyers and roll-ups to the conference the same morning or to drop the batch of documents to the accountant’s office in the last minute before closing.

The company focuses on B2B deliveries with real-time tracking and a strong emphasis on professional-centric services. The deliveries range from fresh fruits delivered straight to offices to legal documents.

Website: dropoff.com

Founder: Sean Spector

Round of funding: Series B

Funding: $17.2M

Hypergiant

Despite all the hype around artificial intelligence, there is a fundamental challenge in building AI-driven companies. The technology appears to be a bunch of overhyped buzzwords with less than a handful of practical implementations.

Hypergiant’s innovation comes with offering companies a “pragmatic” AI, that is basically a business tool, not the fancy marketing gadget.

Website: hypergiant.com

Founder: Ben Lamm

Round of funding: Corporate 

Funding: undisclosed

Hitch

Another variation on the Uber-like ridesharing trend. This time, however, the idea is to travel between cities in a more comfortable way than taking a bus.

There are still similarities to a bus ride, though. There are specific pick-up points and hours of departure. But here, just like in Uber, anyone can become a driver. And, as Hitch says, the middle seat is never booked to make sure everyone feel comfortable during the ride.

Website: ridehitch.com

Founders: Jay Manickam, Matthew Chasen, Tanui Girish, Kush Singh

Round of funding: Seed

Funding: $848.1K

Revealix

Diabetes, when controlled and treated accordingly, makes life only a little more complicated than being healthy. On the other hand, when not treated accordingly, it may end with drastic consequences, including amputation of a limb. According to Diabetes UK, between 2014 and 2017, British doctors performed on average 169 diabetes-related amputations a week.

Revealix aims to tackle the problem by designing a monitoring software harnessing the power of wearables to spot the early signs of diabetes-related problems with limbs.

Website: revealix.com

Founder: Adrianna Cantu

Foundation round: Private

Rocket Dollar

Fintech sector is fascinating to watch – it is a pinnacle of startup society, with new, dynamic and agile players dethroning old, fat and slow ones. By offering financial products in new forms and models, fintech startups reach for audiences that are too risky for traditional banks.

Rocket Dollar is combining both trends by providing the users the ability to forge their own Individual Retirement Account and tailor investing strategy to their needs. Bitcoin? Real estate? Startups? Peer-to-peer lending? That’s all up to you.  

Website: rocketdollar.com

Founder: Henry Yoshida

Round of funding: Seed

Funding: $3.6M

Scalefactor

With all the data-flooding and strict sets of rules to follow, accounting and cash management are the perfect fit for machine learning. And that’s basically what Scalefactor is offering. Contrary to most of business intelligence and accounting support software, the company aims to reach the small and medium business sector.

Website: scalefactor.com

Founder: Kurt Rathman

Round of funding: Series C

Funding: $103M

Tenfold

Despite the rising popularity of chatbots and the shift of customer service toward the online channel, customers still like to just take a phone call and talk to the assistant. According to the Capterra data, in 2018, 74% of American customers contacted a company via contact center or phone. Moreover, 43% of customers start their interaction with a company by contact center, not the online channel.

The contact centers are here to stay. Tenfold aims to turn the contact center, CRM and BI tools into a unified ecosystem to harness the power of data flowing through it. The ultimate goal is to provide a unified view of the customer for all departments.

Website: tenfold.com

Founders: Sean Pinegar, Daniel Sincavage

Round of funding: Series C

Funding: $34.7M

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is another SaaS-based e-commerce platform that aims to redefine the way the online business is being done. The company focuses on cutting the marginal costs that stack up to the point it suffocates the e-tailer. BigCommerce declares that it is going for 80% reduction of all the costs involved in online selling. It is also one of the most experienced tech startups in Austin, established in 2009. If you need some experienced entrepreneurs that didn’t lose the startup spirit, that’s the destination.

Website: bigcommerce.com

Founder: Eddie Machaalani

Round of funding: Series F

Funding: $219.2M

ClearBlade

Introducing themselves as a new industrial revolution, ClearBlade is focused on delivering IoT and machine learning solutions. The startup build systems with a goal to save lives of workers and citizens. Their platform provides simple monitoring of rail crossings system and enables to communicate with any device of choice.

To optimise operations, their technology concentrates on real-time visibility and data analysis.

Website: clearblade.com

Founder: Eric Simone

Round of funding: Series A

Funding: $8.1M

Bungalo

Getting own home for you and your family is a big part of the typical American Dream. However, the process of buying a property is often stressful and time-consuming – and this is what Bungalo aims to change.

Bungalo’s platform allows potential homeowners find, visit, and buy their new house in the easiest way possible. Everything is done in an Airbnb-ish style, and the price of each property is known upfront. Bungalo currently operates in five major cities and offers exclusive houses that are not available anywhere else.

Website: bungalohomes.com

Round of funding: Series A

Funding: $250M

Dosh

Dosh makes cashback available even during one’s everyday shopping. The start-up allows users to link their credit cards with the app – every time the credit card is used at one of the shops and restaurants Dosh works with, 10% cashback ends up on the customer’s account.

The company works with 1000s of different brands, including Walmart, Nike, Sephora, and more. Big players, including PayPal, have already invested nearly $100 million in the start-up.

Website: dosh.cash

Founder: Ryan Wuerch

Round of funding: Series B

Funding: $87M

ICON

This Austin startup takes the battle with housing crisis to another level. Taking to their heart the American principle of making everything huge, they built an enormous 3D printer that can 3D print houses.

In 2018, ICON has successfully finished the first 3D-printed house in the U.S., and since then the company has participated in multiple other projects, including creating shelters and homes for poor and homeless.

Website: iconbuild.com

Founders: Jason Ballard, Alex Le Roux, Evan Loomis

Round of funding: Seed

Funding: $9M

Living Security

Cybersecurity is a big thing nowadays, but the topic is still often ignored by employees. That’s where Living Security comes in – an Austin-based startup that teaches people why cybersecurity matters and how one should approach it.

They work directly with other companies, offering their employees fun trainings with gamification features. Online trainings are one thing, but what would you say about cybersecurity-themed Escape Room? Yup, Living Security also offers it.

Website: livingsecurity.com

Founders: Ashley and Drew Rose

Round of funding: Seed

Funding: $1.8M

Backtracks

First, everybody wanted a blog. Then, a YouTube channel. Now, the big thing are podcasts.

Backtracks makes use of this trend by providing industry leading podcast analytics tool. Want to know who, what, when, where, and how listens to your new show? Backtracks will help you answer these questions.

Website: backtracks.fm

Founders:  Jonathan Gill, Kevin Wright 

Round of funding: Seed

Funding: $2.2M

Summary

AI, ridesharing, instant deliveries and cybersecurity are just a small part of what Austin startups are interested in. With the SXSW fueling up the local tech scene every year, there is surely a lot more innovation coming from the local Texan entrepreneurs. We’re really excited to see what 2021 will bring to Austin!

Our iOS developers in Austin are waiting for you there!