Hey, those cool consumer tech startups get all the buzz, right?

Well, there’s an element of truth to that as the tech press (including us) fawns over the latest photo-sharing, daily-deal or gaming upstart.

gw200But, as we all know, big things are happening in the enterprise — from the rise of cloud computing to the trends behind big data. That’s why, for this month’s update on the GeekWire 200, our list of the top 200 startup companies in the Seattle area, we’re focusing on the companies that make things work behind the scenes or help businesses operate more efficiently.

The top two companies on the overall list remain consumer-oriented companies: Big Fish and Zulily.

But filtering for B2B companies shows a slightly different leaderboard with companies such as DocuSign; INRIX; Avalara; HasOffers and Opscode in the top 10. In total, there are 82 companies classified in the B2B category on the GeekWire 200.

There were also some big movers on the list in the past month. Marketing analytics software company Moz, formerly SEOmoz, started its climb back up the charts. It rose 23 spots to #15 on the list. Cloud computing startup Socrata, which just raised $18 million in venture funding to help governments unlock data, jumped seven spots to #84 on the overall list.

Here’s a look at the top 10 business-to-business companies on the GeekWire 200.

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It’s also worth noting that two of the Seattle area companies that completed initial public offerings in the second quarter — Tableau Software and Nanostring Technologies — are in the B2B arena. (Note: Once a company goes public, it is removed from the GeekWire 200 list).

When was the last time a consumer-oriented Seattle tech company went public? Well, you’d have to go back three years to Zillow’s IPO in July 2011.

So, what enterprise company is next to break out in Seattle? INRIX has been discussed as a potential IPO candidate, and Google’s reported $1.3 billion acquisition of traffic navigation service Waze will no doubt get those engines revving again. Apptio CEO Sunny Gupta also hasn’t been shy about his desires to build a long-lasting enterprise software company in the Northwest. The company’s valuation surpassed $600 million during its $45 million venture round in May.

The GeekWire 200 uses publicly available data — including social media followings, approximate employee counts and inbound web links — to generate a ranking of 200 top companies from our broader list of more than 700 Seattle-area tech startups. It’s not a perfect list by any means, but we think it starts to put the Seattle startup community in some perspective. It’s also a work in progress, and we are constantly working on ways to improve the list. 

We also use data from Seattle startup Rival IQ to better understand the trends influencing the companies on the GeekWire 200. Here’s a look at the companies getting the best engagement on Facebook over the past month.

engagement

To make sure your startup is eligible for inclusion in the GeekWire 200, first make sure it’s included in the broader Startup List. If so, there’s no need to submit it separately for the GeekWire 200. If your Seattle-area startup isn’t among the companies on that larger list, you can submit it for inclusion here, and our algorithm will also crunch the numbers to see if your company makes next month’s GeekWire 200.

In addition to sorting by B2B, you can also sort by more than 20 different sub-categories, from gaming to advertising to education. Here’s a look at the business-to-business companies on the GeekWire 200, as ranked by their Twitter followings.

toptwitterb2b

You can view and sort the full GeekWire 200 ranking for July here.

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