15 Technology Companies To Watch In 2018

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ll signs point towards an exciting and innovative 2018 for the tech sector. The Internet of Things and machine learning are converging to create a smarter world. Breakthroughs in biotechnology and health offer promise for billions of people all over the globe

Picture: © Depositphotos.com/SergeyNivens

Sharing economies are creating independence and prosperity. Self driving cars are no longer a fiction of the imagination. On the B2B side, old industries are transforming before our eyes and new ones are emerging out of thin air. The revolution is being led by bold companies seeking to create value and innovation. Here are 15 awesome technology companies to watch in 2018.

Cloudbeds

While Airbnb has eaten a big slice of the hospitality pie with its sharing economy platform, traditional hotels are also innovating with platforms that help them operate better. Cloudbeds is a hotel management software that helps hotels with property management, channel management and a booking engine. The end-to-end platform allows customers to maximize occupancy and reduce time on operational functions. In an ever competitive hospitality environment, Cloudbeds helps hotels run better and make more money. The platform is used by tens of thousands of hotels in over 100 countries. Founded in 2012, Cloudbeds has raised $20 million in funding and has 100 employees.

Concurra

In an ever increasing digital world, the importance of a company’s website, and its ability to convert, can’t be overstated. Enter Concurra, a website optimization platform that improves user experience and conversion. The tool offers a combination of web analytics, goal tracking, page personalization, A/B testing, rapid prototyping, heat mapping, session recording and multivariate testing. By offering customers the ability to aggregate all of this data in one place as well as implement changes on the spot, Concurra makes it easy for website owners to increase conversion. The powerful platform is catching on – with 300 percent company growth since the beginning of the year, and a million pageviews processed in November alone. Concurra is available to digital agencies, marketers and brands.

Etermax

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, Trivia Crack will probably sound familiar. The mega hit app, which went viral over a year ago, still has 20 million daily active users, who have collectively answered 80 billion questions and created 45 million questions. Trivia Crack was developed by mobile developer Etermax, a Buenos Aires-based company that has helped redefine the entire app game category by raising the bar on user interactivity, creative detail, and unconventional monetization. Recently, Etermax partnered with Mattel to create the first official Pictionary app, to complement the physical board game. To date, 200 million drawings have been submitted by users across 100 countries. In an industry plagued by one-hit wonders, Etermax has proved its staying power and plans to expand to Germany and release four new and exciting games next year.

Leanplum

With the incredible rise of mobile, companies need tools to help them reach, convert and retain users. Leanplum, a mobile marketing platform that helps businesses improve engagement, is any modern marketer’s dream. The tool enables brands to message with users, improve the in-app experience for them, and ultimately grow. The San Francisco-based company has raised $93 million in funding and counts brands including Tinder, Grab and Zynga as customers. Recently, Leanplum released a new product called Campaign Composer, which uses mobile insights and behavioral data to help customers create a responsive, multi channel campaign for each individual user. The intuitive platform allows marketers to easily reach and resonate with users in a personalized way.

Medallia

With too many customer data points to capture, analyze and act upon, companies are losing out on the opportunity to improve customer experience – and bottom line. That is why Medallia, a customer experience management platform, is on fire. The platform helps companies collect and analyze customer feedback from across the web, social, mobile and other channels – and convert insights into actions that can be taken across the entire organization. The ultimate result? A better customer experience – and therefore a healthier business and profits. Medallia offers its platform to hospitality, retail, financial services, high-tech and B2B companies. Medallia, which is based in Silicon Valley and has raised $255 million in funding, says it has 98% customer retention.

Nauto

Autonomous driving has captured the hearts of people across the globe, and entrepreneurs and investors are seizing the opportunity to be part of the revolution. One company focused on the sector is Nauto, an autonomous driving data platform. Nauto collects information through bidirectional cameras – one facing the road and one facing the driver – which is fed to an AI engine that improves safety. By understanding driver behavior, the company is able to offer insights and education to battle driver distraction and tiredness. Nauto has raised $173 millionfrom the likes of SoftBank and Reid Hoffman. In addition to improving safety today, Nauto’s sheer volume of data collection means it may become a powerful player in making autonomous driving a widespread reality.

OptimalPlus

The rise in IIOT and connectivity has led to a reality where integrity and quality of electronic devices has reached unprecedented importance. A hardware failure in a smart device can affect much more than the device itself. The nightmare scenario of a robot or an autonomous car malfunctioning and endangering lives – due to nothing more than a hardware defect – is a real concern. That’s why OptimalPlus, a big data analytics company that helps reduce such occurrences, is on a growth spurt. The platform offers electronics and semiconductor manufacturers deep product analytics and actionable insights that improve quality and reliability by reducing defective parts per million. The company analyzed 60 billion devices this year, and customers include Qualcomm, Nvidia and Renesas Electronics. OptimalPlus, which is headquartered in Israel, has raised $72 million in funding and has 250 employees.

PatientPop

Between heaps of regulation, mind-numbing loads of paperwork and stiff competition, running a successful medical practice is no easy feat. PatientPop has created a software platform that enables healthcare providers to promote themselves online and automate certain office functions. The tool helps practices optimize their website and get listed in dozens of directories across the web. It also makes it easy for patients to leave reviews. And lastly, it automates scheduling and other administrative tasks – including patient follow-up. Collectively, PatientPop offers healthcare practices an easy tool to attract patients, increase retention, streamline operations and reduce costs. With $24 million in funding, the Santa Monica-based company seems to have struck a nerve.

Perch Interactive

Many pundits have been forecasting the end of brick-and-mortar retail, while giant online retailers – most recently Amazon, with its purchase of Whole Foods – continue to invest heavily in physical stores. One company merging in-store shopping with interactive technology is Perch Interactive. By offering digital displays within physical stores, Perch Interactive offers consumers a wealth of digital content and engagement while they are in the store, while collecting data that brings actionable insights to brands. The company, which counts Neiman Marcus, Kate Spade and Sunglass Hut as clients, says it’s computer vision, infrared and RFID technologies can be embedded in any retail fixture or display. In addition to engaging consumers, the platform offers a full CMS and analytics component that can manage hundreds of thousands of units in the field. Perch Interactive says it can get consumers to buy up to 80 percent more, and that the company is doubling revenue year over year.

Propel

The PR industry has adopted technology at a snail’s pace compared to the rest of the marketing ecosystem. Propel, a recently launched AI-driven CRM for PR, is on a mission to help the PR industry innovate. The platform increases efficiency of public relations workers. By collecting loads of data and leveraging wisdom of the crowd, Propel enables PR teams – either agency or in-house – to understand which journalists are relevant, which pitches are resonating, and which campaigns are working. Propel offers actionable insights to help users hone in on the right messages and reporters, and improve quality and quantity of coverage. The CRM also offers powerful streamlining and organizational tools that help users more easily manage their workload, as well as a dashboard for managers that makes clear which employees and campaigns are most effective. The Tel Aviv-based company launched this year and is in the midst of a funding round.

Relativity Space

Imagine slashing the cost of rocket production by a factor of 10, through the use of 3D printing. That is exactly the mission that startup Relativity Space is on. Acknowledging that the most expensive resource in building rockets is human labor, the founders of Relativity Space – both aerospace engineers – decided that taking humans off of the factory floor would dramatically slash the price of building a rocket. With $8 million in funding and a larger than life mission, Relativity Space has produced an entirely automated rocket production floor, driven by 3D printing and 20 feet tall robotic arms. The company says it can produce a rocket that would typically cost $100 million for $10 million, at a much faster pace. The Los Angeles-based company, which currently has a team of 15 people, aims to send its first rocket to space by 2021.

StartApp

If data is the most valuable currency of our time, then StartApp is probably one of the most wealthy companies on earth. The mobile insights company collects data from over a billion monthly active mobile users, across 350,000 applications. The vast amount of data that StartApp is able to process – to be precise, 90,000 user generated events per second from 190 countries – enables it to understand user behavior, preferences and intents at a specific and actionable level. These real-time insights can then be sold to app developers – including Mattel, Baidu, King – in order to help them make better marketing/advertising, UI and development decisions. StartApp was named the fastest-growing private company in New York in 2015 by both Inc. and Crain’s New York, having grown from $200,000 to $37 million in revenue in the previous three years. Since then, the company has nearly doubled, and has a team of 186 employees.

TOM

While hackathons have been all the rage, an equally awesome brother of the famous geek gathering – that is, the makeathon – is on the rise. If you’re asking what the heck a makeathon is, think hackathon – as in lots of nerds gathering and working together all day and night towards building something great – except instead of making software products, participants make physical, tangible items. One of the most impressive startups in the makeathon arena is TOM, a non-profit that brings together developers, designers, engineers and makers in order to solve everyday problems for people with disabilities. TOM connects “need-knowers” (people with disabilities) with professionals for a two or three-day volunteer makeathon event. The teams learn about a specific problem and build a product that solves it, before the end of the event. TOM, which is based in Israel, has hosted dozens of makeathons all over the world, from Kazakhstan and Buenos Aires to Melbourne and New York.

Virta Health

What if diabetes could be reversed without medications or surgery? For nearly 400 million people throughout the world, Virta Health may be a dream come true. The startup helps patients with type II diabetes – which accounts for 90 percent of cases – experience dramatic improvements in hemoglobin A1c reduction, blood sugar control, weight loss, triglycerides improvement, and reduction or elimination of medications. By offering users a deeply personalized program of nutrition and ongoing coaching and support, the company says that most patients see a remarkable improvement in mere weeks. This allows for decreases in both blood pressure and diabetes medications. The secret sauce? Virta creates a personalized approach based on individual biochemistry, lifestyle and medication, and uses machine learning to gather insights. The company has raised $37 million in funding and is based in San Francisco.

Zipline

Zipline wants to undo the sad reality of more than a quarter of people around the world lacking access to medical necessities like blood and vaccines. The company, therefore has literally built an army of small drones and the technology to operate them, in order to deliver on-demand medical supplies to people in need. Based in California, Zipline is already operational in Rwanda – with 1,400 commercial flights under its belt and the successful delivery of 2,600 units of blood. The results are impressive. Patients were able to receive blood in just 15 minutes, rather than the typical four hours it would take without a drone. Zipline wants to expand from just blood to medications that combat HIV and malaria as well. The company has raised $41 million in venture capital and plans to open up shop in Tanzania in 2018.

Dan Reich is the CEO & Co-Founder of Troops, a venture-backed business that is building artificial intelligence for work. He is also the Co-Founder of TULA, a health and beauty business.

Dan Reich, Contributor

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