A startup is a project or a business idea, with the goal of development and profit. In today’s article, our task is to talk about the best startups in 2019. We single out several major companies.
HANDSHAKE
No one would have noticed how in October last year, funds invested $40 million in Handshake recruiting startup if the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, created by Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, Investment in Handshake, a startup looking for students, is the first US-China business deal.
This choice is not accidental. Mark and Priscilla invested in the HeadHunter counterpart, which brings together universities and colleges whose graduates are looking for a job, and companies that need new employees.
For each employed jobseeker Handshake receives money from a happy employer, and rating points are awarded to the university, which increases its status in the system. 700 universities, 300 companies, and 14 million graduates are already participating in the project, and its cost is $275 million.
Perhaps we have before us a model by which recruiting agencies around the world will soon work.
ZUME PIZZA
Business Insider in August predicted the collapse of pizza empires. According to statistics, more and more Americans are refusing the services of Domino’s and Pizza Hut in favor of eateries near the house.
This played into the hands of startup Zume: in 2015, the company roboticist the kitchen (to the point where people needed it just to roll out the dough) and then developed fully automated bakery wagons that cook food on the go.
The project received its first major investments in 2017 — $48 million. And in November, another $375 million was invested in Zume by the Japanese SoftBank. “Zume is building a hybrid of Uber and Starbucks,” explains Grishin.
“Fresh pizza will be delivered to you quickly, and it will turn out healthier because there are no preservatives in it.” In the future, projects like Zume will be able to fight not only with “Papa Jones”, but also with “Colonel Sanders” and other pillars of fast food.
Sensitive
In the spring of 2016, after supper at the Chocolate Girl, Polina Anisimova, as expected, went to the restroom. She did not suspect that hidden cameras were installed in the toilets and this video will go to the forum for perverts.
But after a couple of months, a stranger wrote to her on Facebook and attached a screenshot where the girl is sitting carefree in the closet. He finds her with the help of a face recognition application developed by the Moscow company NtechLab.
In the future, this system could help the special services with the search for criminals, but in Russia, it has become an instrument of virtual bullying. A similar Chinese startup, SenseTime, went further by selling the technology to local smartphone manufacturers.
Now, people shot with their cameras automatically fall into a common database. Last year, the project raised $600 million. The money will go to the analysis of the video stream coming from smartphones from all over the Middle Kingdom. The founders promise that SenseTime will be able to identify every Chinese by all means.
MOMENTUS SPACE
Mikhail Kokorich could become the East European Ilon Mask, but life in Russia has made its adjustments. First, his startup Dauria became the first private company to receive a satellite license from Roscosmos.
But in 2014, sanctions fell on the country, and Kokorich, having sold his share in the business, left for the USA. Then the FSB brought a criminal case against his startup. Now the businessman lives in California and is engaged in a new Momentus project — the launch of low-cost space rockets.
His main know-how is a water-powered engine. “It’s a small microwave the size of a coffee can,” the businessman explains. “In it, water vapor is heated to a temperature higher than on the surface of the Sun, and then superheated gas is ejected from the nozzle and creates traction.”
In November, they invested $8.3 million in the project, but Kokorich did not disclose the exact cost of the business. Waiting for space tourists and asteroid mining companies to fill the world, he is preparing the first launch of the Momentus rocket in early 2019.
If you think that Romania gave the world only gypsies and Dracula, you are mistaken.
This year, the Bucharest startup UiPath could become a gold mine for companies like British Petroleum or Apple and a curse for most employed humanity. Its main task is to automate routine office processes.
Instead of a manager, a computer independently fills out forms for paying fees, and smart video surveillance systems negate the work of professional security services. Over the past two years, the cost of UiPath has increased almost 30 times up to $3 billion, and the ubiquitous Google, or rather, its subsidiary CapitalG, has invested in the project.
Further development of artificial intelligence will make hordes of virtual workers even more perfect and dangerous for each of those who manage to get the habit of getting paid. Cars do not spend time for lunch, sleep and watching porn in the office.
JUMP BIKES
Electric bicycles are taking over the world. If we move on to numbers, now the world market of so-called e-bikes is growing at about $1 billion per year and, according to the forecast of the consulting agency Navigant Research, will be estimated at $24.4 billion by 2025.
At the same time, new types of bike-sharing are developing. Forget about stations with rental bicycles like the ones that have become a familiar part of summer Moscow — they are already uncomfortable with the fact that to start or end the rental you need to go somewhere or go specifically.
A real breakthrough is rental bikes without stations that are on every corner. The boom of such biking in less than a year has led to the fact that in Shanghai alone the number of rental bicycles has tripled and reached 1.5 million units.
Chinese bike-sharing operator Ofo is already valued at more than $1 billion and even won the visit of Apple CEO Tim Cook. Jump Bikes is the bet that Uber made in this game. For $200 million, a startup providing electric bike rental services was purchased.
The company plans to allow combining different types of transport on the route: car, e-bike, boat, and a helicopter. Now Jump is being tested in San Francisco, the city in which the history of Uber itself once began.
Digital Agency London
