Seattle 10 startup winenr from 2015 Spare5 works on their cocktail napkin.
Seattle 10 startup winner from 2015 Spare5 works on their cocktail napkin.

From the brick walkways of Pioneer Square to the funky facades of Fremont, there’s a lot of startup action in Seattle.

So trying to identify the 10 hottest entrepreneurial ventures in the region is no easy task. But that’s what we’ve set out to do with this year’s class of The Seattle 10, which we’re hosting again in partnership with the Museum of History & Industry.

seattle10-mohai-sea10-stencil1-620x413This year’s list showcases 10 of the most promising startups in the region, and their business concepts span a variety of industries, from education and enterprise software to virtual reality and robotics.

Yes, the Seattle startup scene is alive and well. But this year’s list goes much further than simple recognition.

We’re putting our entrepreneurs to work, asking each of The Seattle 10 winners to reproduce their business ideas on giant six-foot by six-foot cocktail napkins that will be unveiled for the first time at the GeekWire Gala on Dec. 7th at MOHAI.

This marks the fourth year that we’ve partnered with MOHAI on this fun activity, and we’re once again excited to see what the startups concoct. We’ve already heard that some of the teams are hard at work devising their artistic creations, and we assume that this will get a little competitive as the startups try to outdo each other.

The 2015 Seattle 10 companies on display at MOHAI
The 2015 Seattle 10 companies on display at MOHAI

If you have not already, make sure to grab your tickets for the GeekWire Gala, and come out to see these wonderful creations, applaud the Newsmakers of Year and participate in the geekiest holiday party on the planet.

We received dozens of fantastic nominations this year, making it an especially challenging task for our illustrious panel of judges — Madrona Venture Group’s Julie Sandler, angel investor Gary Rubens, Techstars Seattle director Chris DeVore, angel investor Heather Redmand, Pioneer Square Labs co-founder Ben Gilbert and MOHAI executive diretor Leonard Garfield— to help pick the winners. In order to qualify, companies had to be based in the Seattle area with a world-changing business idea.

Without further ado, let’s meet this year’s class of the Seattle 10, presented by GeekWire and MOHAI.

The fast-growing Auth0 team
The fast-growing Auth0 team

Auth0

Auth0 may not be the best known startup, or the easiest to understand. But if you ask venture capitalists for an objective take on the hottest startups in the region, this Bellevue based company — a maker of identity and authentication technologies — often rises to the top of the list.

Led by former Microsoft manager Jon Gelsey, the three-year-old startup combines existing login and identity verification options into a few lines of code that developers can quickly add to their applications. The goal? Create a “zero friction identity and access management solution for cloud-hybrid applications and APIs.”

“We built Auth0 because we were annoyed about how hard it was to integrate identity into apps,” Gelsey told us in 2014. “As identity experts, we knew it didn’t have to be that hard.”

Previously on GeekWire: Auth0 raises $15M from Trinity Ventures and others to bolster its identity platform

Coding Dojo

Students at Coding Dojo
Students at Coding Dojo

Let’s face it, we need more computer scientists and engineers. Coding Dojo wants to help solve that problem, operating coding bootcamps in Seattle, Dallas, Silicon Valley, Washington D.C., Chicago and LA. It offers courses in Python, Ruby and other programming languages. teaching students the basic of coding in just 14 weeks.

CEO Richard Wang has big ambitions for the Bellevue-based company.

“We often say that we’re in the business of transforming lives — not just teaching coding,” Wang told GeekWire last year. “We’re setting our goals high and hope to transform the lives of 1 million people through programming literacy by 2025.”

Previously on GeekWire: Coding Dojo bootcamp hopes to ‘transform lives’ with programming classes

Convoy

The Convoy team. Photo via Convoy.
The Convoy team. Photo via Convoy.

When you think of technology, the trucking industry is not the first thing that comes to mind. But those big rigs on the road transport most of the goods in our homes and businesses, and making sure they get from point A to point B as seamlessly as possible is the goal of Convoy.

The Seattle startup matches truck drivers and trucking companies with shippers to coordinate freight shipments. Not the sexiest industry, but one that’s estimated at some $800 billion in the U.S.

Convoy has raised some big-time money, from big-time backers. Silicon Valley venture capital firm Greylock Partners, Jeff Bezos’ investment company Bezos Expeditions and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman participated in the company’s $16 million round in August.

CEO Dan Lewis, who previously served as general manager of new shopping experiences at Amazon and worked at Google and Microsoft, hopes to bring efficiency to the trucking business. “We handle everything from end-to-end, taking care of them, handling customer support, getting the truck where it needs to be at the right time,” says Lewis.

Previously on GeekWire: Q&A: Convoy CEO Dan Lewis on lessons learned from Amazon, and disrupting the trucking industry

M3 Biotechnology

Leen Kawas, CEO of M3 Biotechnology. (Photo: M3)
Leen Kawas, CEO of M3 Biotechnology.

M3 Biotechnology is developing advanced therapeutics to wipe out neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s. It’s a big idea, driven by founder and CEO Leen Kawas who earned a degree in molecular pharmacology from Washington State University in 2011.

This up-and-coming biotech upstart is making good strides.

In tests on animals, M3 said its compound has reversed both cognitive and motor deficits around neurodegenerative diseases.

“Where current therapies primarily address disease symptoms, M3 has patented … proprietary technologies differentiating itself to create disease-modifying treatments with the potential to restore lost connections between brain cells, turning degeneration into regeneration,” the company says.

M3 got a big boost earlier this year when it pulled in $10 million in funding, including cash from W Fund, Washington Research Foundation, and others.

Previoulsy on GeekWire: Alzheimer-fighting M3 Biotechnology closes $10 million funding round

Outreach

The Outreach team (Photo / Outreach)
The Outreach founding team: Manuel Medina, Gordon Hempton, Wes Hather, Andrew Kinzer (Photo / Outreach)

Manuel Medina is on a mission to make it easier for sales teams to do their jobs. The CEO of Outreach is well on his way to that goal, with thousands of customers and recent war chest of funding from big names in venture capital.

“Our vision is to completely transform the way sales professionals communicate by streamlining traditionally manual processes and using data to optimize the effectiveness of every sales activity,” Medina told GeekWire last year.

Outreach employs 120 people, up from about 80 employees earlier this summer.

Previously on GeekWire: Outreach sales tech startup raises $17.5M, adds Trinity and Microsoft as investors

Pixvana

Pixvana founders Bill Hensler and Forest Key. Photo via Pixvana.
Pixvana founders Bill Hensler and Forest Key. Photo: Pixvana.

Forest Key wants to make sure virtual reality lives up to the hype, and at Pixvana his team wants to make sure all virtual reality experiences look amazing.

“With virtual reality video, people will tell new kinds of stories and it will require unique technology,” Key told us last year.

A veteran in the Seattle startup ranks, Key previously co-founding online travel upstart Buuteeq, which sold to Priceline Group in 2014.

Previously on GeekWire: Ex-Buuteeq CEO Forest Key raises $6M for virtual reality video processing startup Pixvana

Poppy

The Poppy team
The Poppy team

Poppy founder Avni Patel Thompson agrees that it takes a village to raise a child.

But with careers and education taking parents away from home, families need access to a trusted community. That’s where Poppy steps in, which is operating a marketplace to help parents screen and find baby sitters and nannies.

“Poppy believes that every family deserves a village and her mission is to use data and technology to connect every family to theirs,” said Patel Thompson.

Previously on GeekWire: Poppy raises cash, expands on-demand childcare service in Seattle region

Rover

Rover employees celebrate with CEO Aaron Easterly after his CEO of the Year award win at the 2016 GeekWire Awards.
Rover employees celebrate with CEO Aaron Easterly after his CEO of the Year award win at the 2016 GeekWire Awards.

A lot of people laughed when venture capitalist Greg Gottesman started Rover.com at a Startup Weekend event, noting that an online pet sitting service was not a legitimate business. Well, Rover is the one laughing now, as the company has emerged as an unexepected giant in the online pet sitting marketplace.

Just last month, Rover reeled in $40 million in fresh funding, and CEO Aaron Easterly said it was on the path to an IPO.

Founded in 2011, Rover has now raised $91.5 million and the 170-person company continues to grow its platform, which now helps 65,000 pet sitters across 10,000 U.S. cities book more than one million services per quarter. In August, the company said that during the first half of this year, it surpassed an annual run rate of $100 million in gross billings.

Previously on GeekWire: Rover raises $40M as dog-sitting platform eyes IPO and aims for profitability

Usermind

Usermind is not the easiest concept to understand, and even the company’s marketing team has challenges explaining it to family and friends. But the company is solving a big need for enterprises, helping them integrate business functions and unify data across teams.

Michel Feaster
Michel Feaster

“I wanted to see if I could take a passionate idea I had and build a great company from scratch,” CEO Michel Feaster told GeekWire shortly after founding Usermind in 2013.

Feaster likens her enterprise software company to an orchestra conductor who manages different musical instruments and is required to have them all playing together in harmony. Those instruments, in this example, are analogous to the various standalone enterprise applications a given company uses — along with the finance, sales, marketing employees — that help serve customers in today’s digital world.

Previously on GeekWire: Menlo Ventures leads $14.5M round for Usermind, an enterprise business operations startup

WiBotic

WiBotic CEO Ben Waters. Photo via WiBotic.
WiBotic CEO Ben Waters. Photo via WiBotic.

WiBotic provides reliable wireless power to charge aerial, mobile and aquatic robot systems. Yeah, cool stuff.

Originally founded within the University of Washington’s electrical engineering and computer science departments, the year-old company is just emerging from stealth mode.

“WiBotic is creating the infrastructure for robots to charge whenever and wherever— so companies can focus on robot tasks rather than keeping their robots charged,” WiBotic CEO and co-founder Ben Waters says. “Enabling better access to power and autonomous charging opens up a whole new world of possibilities for robots.”

Previously on GeekWire: This University of Washington spin-out can charge robots and drones wirelessly

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