The global pandemic has brought about a true boom in startups, with a number of new companies around the world significantly surpassing previous years. In 2021, 5.3 million new business applications were filed, setting a new record.
There is a slew of challenges for young startups, however. Inflation, failing to raise funding, not having the market demand for their products, and struggling to build a talented team are just a few examples of the challenges that young businesses are currently facing.
The good news is that 10% of startups manage to overcome these hurdles, achieve their business goals, and help their customers leverage the newest technologies to create better opportunities—creating cream of the crop business solutions.
Let’s explore 20 thriving startups that started their journey no more than five years ago and have been making a big difference in their industries ever since.
Eden Data [Founded in 2021]
Eden Data is on a mission to break the outdated mold of traditional cybersecurity consulting.
The company provides a better way to help organizations build a more robust cybersecurity program to protect the data they collect—constructing security, compliance, and data privacy for organizations based on their exact goals and technology stack.
With a focus on the next generation of businesses ready to build security and privacy into their DNA, Eden helps to implement these goals into everything from a company’s culture to their technologies to their entire operating processes.
Eden Data’s long-term vision is to create a future where companies can bring great ideas to fruition using the internet, while effortlessly maintaining appropriate data security and privacy.
TripCandy [Founded in 2021]
TripCandy is a company that brings together two exciting industries – travel and crypto.
It is a novel travel platform that allows users to book hotels and accommodation, and then get rewarded with crypto $CANDY tokens as cashback.
The startup then goes further to help users turn their travel experiences into crypto investments.
Leveraging its cryptocurrency token ($CANDY), TripCandy aims to establish the premium standard in travel accommodations and services through the innovative use of blockchain technology.
LiftedViz [Founded in 2021]
LiftedViz helps organizations evolve their business reporting by migrating the procedure from overwhelming spreadsheets to dashboards with reusable templates and development processes.
The company also focuses on delivering a solid foundation for data visualization programs by providing the training and reusable resources to enable all teams to tell impactful stories with their data and branding, holding workshops to teach how to produce effective dashboards.
Moreover, the company offers a competitive year-long internship in which entry-level analysts work with them to learn data visualization tools and skills, including Tableau, Power BI, Data Studio, and the LV5D Development Framework.
KalaVita [Founded in 2020]
KalaVita Nutrition is a next-generation natural gummy supplement and lifestyle brand.
With work, school, friends, family, and so many other responsibilities, people can barely find time for themselves, let alone their health. Therefore, KalaVita has created unique, science-driven solution health gummies that not only fit in with people’s busy lifestyles but are delicious as well.
There are no hidden messages and no frivolous extras in their products. Just science-backed, better ingredients that when combined, leverage and protect your body, giving you the boost you need to power up and go.
And what’s more: KalaVita products are completely vegan.
Verb Data [Founded in 2020]
Verb Data is a company that solves the real pain points of building end-user dashboards and reports for businesses. It does this while providing great data experiences to its users through its proprietary technology that simplifies customer-facing analytics for SaaS products.
The company gives software engineers the tools they need to manage and automate their data infrastructure without requiring extra data engineers, something that is proving to be a real game-changer in the space.
Verb hosts your entire data experience — from data lake through embedded visualization — giving your team the tools to model, transform, and create user experiences without having to write a single line of code.
Itiliti Health [Founded in 2019]
Itiliti Health is a company with best-in-class technology that helps to accelerate communication between payers and providers in the medical field.
Itiliti Health’s ambition is to simplify and auto adjudicate the entire prior authorization process. Their first release is a stand-alone product that addresses the specific problem of how providers determine the need for a prior authorization.
This product- PA Checkpoint- allows a provider to determine the need for a prior authorization in real time, thereby reducing calls and unnecessary PA submissions to the payer. This allows their clients to save millions annually due to double digit reductions in call volume, call duration, and prior authorization submissions.
Laska [Founded in 2019]
Laska upcycles end-of-life tires with innovative, eco-friendly, sustainable approaches and brings them back into the economy as energy and raw materials. The company is on a mission to “convert life” by evaluating the use of waste in the most effective way possible.
It contributes to the circular economy by regaining waste tires that cause significant damage to the environment by being burned or buried in cement factories.
Laska aims to reduce carbon dioxide emissions significantly: It saves 2.5 tons of CO2 for each ton of upcycled carbon black compared to conventional carbon black production.
EcoCart [Founded in 2019]
EcoCart is a unique browser extension that empowers its users to offset the carbon footprint of their online purchases.
Customers who choose to offset their emissions using EcoCart are rewarded with EcoPoints to receive prizes and help provide clean water and trees around the world.
The startup offers environmental accounting services that help businesses track their own carbon emissions as well.
The projects that the EcoCart community supports are carefully vetted, certified by internationally recognized standards, and hand-selected by industry experts. Each project aims to maximize positive impacts on both the planet and local communities.
Delchain [Founded in 2018]
Delchain is a one-stop-shop providing the financial services necessary for the blockchain economy and one of the only regulated financial firms that support blockchain and digital assets.
It is a Financial and Corporate Service Provider registered under The Bahamas’ Digital Assets and Registered Exchanges (DARE) Act, regulated by the Securities Commission of The Bahamas.
The company aims to become the bridge that connects regulated financial services and the world of blockchain.
Users can manage their funds with a multi-currency fiat bank account, or a government-issued currency that is not backed by a commodity such as gold. Delchain operates transparently with simple contracts and no hidden fees.
Interviewer.AI [Founded in 2018]
Interviewer.AI makes hiring equitable, explainable, and efficient—helping teams spot high-caliber talent effortlessly.
Interviewer.AI is an AI-driven video recruitment platform that helps recruiters pre-screen candidates before scheduling them for face-to-face interviews. This helps organizations to save both time and money all while matching employees more accurately.
The platform analyzes your candidates’ résumés, putting their skills into assessment tests and pre-screening video interviews. As a result, recruiters get bias-free insights and highlights of the best talent, putting ease back into the hiring process.
Prometeo [Founded in 2018]
Prometeo is the largest open banking platform in Latin America (LATAM).It helps companies access critical financial information to generate innovation, make data-driven decisions, and create digital products.
Prometeo empowers companies through banking APIs to obtain better financial products that enable everything from credit analysis development, bank account validation, centralized bill payments, financial education tools, e-wallets, and payment tracking.
Prometeo provides a single point of access to information, transactions, and payments across more than 33 financial institutions and 105 APIs in 10 countries in LATAM, fostering innovation across the region’s financial sector.
Apiwiz [Founded in 2018]
Apiwiz is a comprehensive, low-code APIOps platform that simplifies application programming interface (API) Lifecycle Management for developers and enterprises alike.
Within the API DevOps framework, Apiwiz allows enterprises to plan and design, build and manage, test and deploy, and finally, publish and monitor all in one place.
Apiwiz unlocks better productivity within API Lifecycle Management, promoting customer-centric experiences through quick go-to-market times and building connected ecosystems for APIs.
Its mission is to help businesses better manage the value creation of automated customer-centric services by streamlining the process of developing, building, and running APIs.
Gentreo [Founded in 2018]
Gentreo is an online estate planning platform that makes estate planning affordable and accessible to all. The team members have dedicated themselves to helping families easily create, store and share complete legal plans to protect what they love when they pass on.
The company focuses on doing something impactful and takes responsibility for its customers’ success.
Through Gentreo, users of all service tiers can create state-specific documents and securely store and share their documents with their loved ones.
Gentreo offers a suite of extras, such as estate planning coaching, onboarding guidance, legal reviews, and funeral planning, to help walk their customers through what can often be a difficult and uncomfortable — yet extremely necessary — process.
IndustrialML [Founded in 2018]
IndustrialML is an enterprise SaaS platform empowering manufacturing plant personnel to succeed in the digital era. The company builds the tools required to keep factories’ production lines running and efficient.
IndustrialML provides integrated actionable information for line operators in factories, manufacturing and quality engineers throughout the facility, and managers working locally or remotely.
The company’s award-winning enterprise SaaS platform integrates and analyzes data from sensors, enterprise IT, video, and audio in real-time, and then provides the tools for your operators, engineers, and managers to act on that information right away.
Venly [Founded in 2018]
Venly (previously Arkane Network) is a blockchain technology provider creating tools and products to help companies benefit from blockchain technology.
The company offers users of blockchain projects digital wallets to store assets with a native solution that also works on mobile devices.
Their global vision is to build both developer-friendly products and an intuitive interface for end-users. At the center of this vision lies simplicity, prime UX, and top-level security.
Venly also recently launched the Venly Market—the first-ever peer-to-peer and blockchain-agnostic NFT marketplace.
Actipulse Neuroscience [Founded in 2017]
Actipulse Neuroscience is one of the few companies based in Latin America working towards the democratization of mental health solutions for patients suffering from depression, anxiety, addictions, and Alzheimer’s.
Its objective is to treat neurological and psychiatric disorders using proprietary neuromodulation technology.
The tech applies high-frequency and low-intensity magnetic pulses to provide non-invasive treatment, achieving a desirable therapeutic effect.
Actipulse Neuroscience has the goal of being the gold standard for neuromodulation technologies in the next five years and to become an integral part of the treatment of the millions of patients suffering from neurological and psychiatric disorders and dementia in the world.
Talview [Founded in 2017]
The Talview Measurement Platform seamlessly orchestrates talent workflows for candidate screening, video and audio interviews, online assessment, and remote proctoring.
The AI-powered platform allows its customers to make quick, confident, and bias-free decisions to provide an equal opportunity for all.
This ultimately helps organizations that are looking to make more efficient, effective, and intelligent decisions throughout their talent lifecycle.
Thousands of recruiters and educators in more than 120 countries trust Talview to reimagine, humanize, and democratize their large-scale recruiting and credentialing processes.
Local Express [Founded in 2017]
Local Express is a SaaS vertical for the Food and Beverage (F&B) industry specializing in providing eCommerce solutions to independent retailers and enterprises seeking digital transformation.
The company’s vision is to modernize the eCommerce experience for food retailers everywhere and make sure that it is available to any grocer in any specialty.
The startup wants to give businesses the possibility to own all the processes, where shop owners don’t need an IT team of 20 people to develop an online store.
Local Express promises that going digital is not that hard and every grocer should have the opportunity to participate in the online shopping revolution.
Komodo Covers [Founded in 2017]
Komodo Covers are boat covers inspired by the scaly skin and expanding rib cage of the Komodo Dragon.
Their innovative, technology-infused covers are designed to be impervious to the elements, protecting your boat from anything mother nature can throw at it.
The company wants to show boat owners and their families how they can make the most of their time on the water and, at the same time, take care of their boats.
There is also an app connected to this cover. Users do not have to have eyes on their boat when the Komodo app Kommander does. Plus, the app alerts them if cockpit humidity, temperature, battery voltage, and strut pressure go out of range, no matter where they are.
SurveySparrow [Founded in 2017]
SurveySparrow is an all-in-one omnichannel experience management platform.
It permits users to build conversational surveys of any type, for any purpose, in any language, and get 40% more responses.
The platform is easy and intuitive to use.
Furthermore, it allows you to collect feedback even from the most remote of places and comes with a wide range of question templates to choose from.
SurveySparrow’s experience solution keeps it effortless to refine the experiences you offer to build a brand and not just a business.
Bonus: Amberlo [Founded in 2017]
Amberlo is a cloud-based law practice management software for law firms of all sizes and all practice areas.
Users can onboard new clients, manage matters, automatically log every minute worked, assign bills, and email clients in one place — all while measuring their law firm’s performance.
Managing contacts and cases, organizing documents, time tracking, legal-specific billing, and planning daily activities for lawyers and their teams, Amberlo makes legal professionals’ lives easier, more secure, and more efficient.
Today Amberlo is trusted by more than 1,000 legal professionals from more than 20 countries, and this number is growing every day.
Disclosure: This article mentions clients of an Espacio portfolio company.
