Business Insider
New York City has become home to some of the tech industry’s most promising companies, including Etsy, MongoDB, and Vice Media.
So we created the Silicon Alley 100 to celebrate people who did the coolest things in the past 365 days.
What does it mean to have done something cool?
Getting acquired or going public — that’s pretty cool. Founding an awesome startup or building impressive hardware — that’s also cool.
Investors? They’re somewhat cool. But the inventors, innovators, and lead executives building the next big things are the people who really should be celebrated. We prioritized entrepreneurs over investors, simply because it’s a lot harder to start a company than to fund one.
Coolest does not mean most important or most impactful. There are many, many people who are instrumental to the New York City tech community who are not recognized on this list.
Thanks to all who make New York City an amazing place to launch a startup.
Flip through this year’s Silicon Alley 100 >>
Disclosure
A number of Business Insider‘s investors appear on this list: RRE, the founders of Zola, and MongoDB.
Many companies on the list share investors with Business Insider.
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Feedback
Disagree with our picks? Let us know what you think in the comments section below or on Twitter using #sa100.
Complete Coverage
In A-Z Order
The Complete List 1-100
The 2013 List
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the many readers who took the time to send us nominations. We would also like to thank Maya Kosoff, Rebecca Borison, Alyson Shontell, and Jay Yarow for their input.
100. Charlie O’Donnell
Partner and founder, Brooklyn Bridge Ventures
Brooklyn Bridge Ventures is a seed and early-stage venture-capital firm, and the first venture-capital fund based in Brooklyn. In November, Brooklyn Bridge Ventures invested in design app Makr, contributing to its $865,000 seed-funding round. In December, Brooklyn Bridge Ventures invested in peer-to-peer lending startup Orchard Platform‘s $2.7 million seed-funding round. Brooklyn Bridge Ventures has also invested in Ringly, SocialSign.in, and goTenna. Its biggest breakout company, however, may be home-security camera company Canary.
Brooklyn Bridge Ventures raised $8.3 million in January. But O’Donnell’s greatest achievement this year in tech may be his support of female founders. Unlike other New York City investors who have female founders in only 10% to 20% of their portfolio companies, female-run companies make up a whopping 62% of O’Donnell’s portfolio.
99. Allison Goldberg
Vice President, Time Warner Investments
Time Warner’s investment group put its money behind some ambitious companies this year. In June, the group invested $5 million in women’s news website Bustle, $6.5 million in Epoxy, a company connecting YouTubers with fans, and a whopping $35 million in data-management company Krux.
Time Warner Investments has also backed self-service advertising platform iSocket and TV marketing platform Simulmedia in the past year.
98. Shana Fisher
Partner, Andreessen Horowitz
Shana Fisher is known for her knack at spotting the hot new startups early on. And in November she took her talents from to Andreessen Horowitz, where she’s now a board partner.
For a better understanding of Fisher’s talent, all you need to do is look at some of her previous investments: MakerBot, Pinterest, Vine, FiftyThree, Refinery29, and Stripe. Fisher tends to keep a low profile, but tech insiders will immediately recognize her success.
Her investment advantage? “I like to think I have a strong grasp of human psychology,” Fisher said about evaluating entrepreneurs.
97. Howard Morgan, Chris Fralic, Phin Barnes, and Wiley Cerilli
Partners, First Round Capital
First Round Capital is a seed-stage New York-based venture-capital firm. In June, it closed a fifth fund of $175 million and announced that Wiley Cerilli, the founder of former portfolio company SinglePlatform, would come to First Round as a venture partner. Barnes moved to First Round’s San Francisco office.
In the past year, First Round has invested in companies like Warby Parker, Fundera, Path, and Chloe + Isabel. First Round was also the first institutional investor in Uber, which is now valued at $18.2 billion. Rumor has it that the Uber investment alone will yield a 5X return on its fund.
96. James Robinson III, James D. Robinson, Stuart J. Ellman
Partners, RRE Ventures
Early-stage venture capital firm RRE had another big year, investing in Izzie Lerer’s media startup The Dodo, dog lovers’ subscription service BarkBox, GIF search engine Giphy, Electric Objects, Sols, Paperless Post, and TheSkimm. In April, RRE raised a $280 million sixth fund.
RRE also saw some substantial payouts from a handful of acquisitions of its portfolio companies, including TapCommerce, which was acquired by Twitter in June to the tune of $100 million, and social TV startup GetGlue, which sold to i.TV in November 2013 for an undisclosed sum.
Disclosure: RRE is an investor in Business Insider
95. David Pakman and Nick Beim
Partners, Venrock
This year, tech- and healthcare-focused venture-capital firm Venrock raised a $450 million fund.
Venrock’s investments in New York include AppNexus, Dataminr, Smartling, Dstillery, YouNow, and others. It also invested in up-and-coming SA100 honoree, YouNow, alongside Union Square Ventures.
In 2014 alone, Venrock has had eight IPOs and five big acquisitions, including $3.2 Nest’s billion acquisition and Klout’s $200 million acquisition by Lithium.
94. Alex Crisses, Deven Parekh, Jeff Horing, Jeff Lieberman, Larry Handen, Michael Triplett, Nikitas Koutoupes, Richard Wells, Ryan Hinkle, Hilary Gosher, Oeter Sobiloff
Partners, Insight Venture Partners
This past year, venture-capital firm Insight Venture Partners saw successful exits of several companies it had invested in, including Twitter’s IPO, book-rental company Chegg’s IPO, and AirWatch’s sale to VMWare for $1.5 billion in cash.
Insight Venture Partners also raised a $510 million new fund. The firm recently participated in Hootsuite’s $60 million Series D round and Qualtrics’ $150 million round.
93. Susan Lyne
President, BBG Ventures at AOL
Susan Lyne, the CEO of AOL’s brand group, stepped down in September but didn’t leave the company.
Instead, Lyne now heads up an AOL-owned venture fund that promotes female-led digital startups called BBG Ventures. It will invest in startups run by women and companies primarily related to “consumer Internet areas, including e-commerce and media.”
92. Josh Mohrer
New York City General Manager, Uber
Mohrer, who was one of Uber’s early employees, built the company’s New York City arm from a revolving door of employees into one of his company’s most lucrative cities. However, some of the tactics he’s used to boost Uber’s East Coast business have been controversial.
Uber competitor Gett blamed Mohrer for calling and then canceling a number of rides on the service when it launched in New York earlier this year.
Despite the drama, investors are still bullish on Uber. In June, Uber raised $1.2 billion in a Series D round from 500 Startups, Menlo Ventures, Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Summit Partners, BlackRock, Wellington Management, and Fidelity Investments, giving the startup an astounding $17 billion valuation. The service is available in nearly 50 countries and more than 100 cities around the world. Its closest competitor, Lyft, is still available only in the US.
91. Alex Iskold
Managing Director, TechStars NYC
Alex Iskold, the founder and CEO of social TV network GetGlue, joined tech accelerator TechStars NYC in November.
TechStars, which runs its incubator in Austin, Boston, Boulder, Chicago, London, New York City, and Seattle, provides startups with $118,000 in funding, mentorship with people in the business, and a strong network of alumni and mentors.
In return, the startups give TechStars 7% to 10% equity in their companies. Before becoming managing director, Iskold helped out at TechStars as a mentor.
90. Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin
Cofounders, The Skimm
Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin quit their jobs at NBC to start a daily email newsletter startup called The Skimm. In November 2013, The Skimm raised a $1.1 million seed round led by Hunter Walk and Satyal Patel’s investment firm, Homebrew.
In April, the startup raised a $1.6 million seed round from AFSquare, Five Island Ventures, Richard Greenfield, Gordon Crawford, Troy Carter, RRE Ventures, Homebrew, and Bob Pittman.
Two years after launch, in June, The Skimm reached the 500,000 subscriber mark.
89. Marc Cenedella
Founder, CEO, Knozen
Former TheLadders CEO Marc Cenedella is the man behind Knozen, an app that lets you anonymously rate and compare your coworkers.
In June, Knozen raised $2.5 million from FirstMark Capital, Lerer Ventures, Greycroft Partners, Box Group, and Whisper cofounder Brad Brooks. Cenedella wants Knozen to become a “personality API,” which businesses can use to help recruit and hire new talent.
88. Victoria Eisner, Jason Perri, and Alexandra Wilkis Wilson
Cofounders and incoming CEO, GLAMSQUAD
GLAMSQUAD, is a New York City-based startup delivering on-demand hair-salon-quality services at home. GLAMSQUAD raised $2 million in seed funding in January.
In September, Alexandra Wilkis Wilson — the cofounder of Gilt Groupe — became the company’s CEO and president. Cofounder Victoria Eisner, who was previously GLAMSQUAD’s CEO, became its executive vice president and chief creative officer.
87. Alex Taub and Michael Schonfeld
Cofounders, SocialRank
Alex Taub and Michael Schonfeld were still working at Dwolla when the two accidentally created a viral sensation by coining the phrase “Most Valuable Follower.”
Since then, the two have left Dwolla, and this year they launched a suite of Twitter analytic tools called SocialRank. SocialRank helps you find your Most Valuable Follower (MVF), your Most Engaged Follower (MEF), and your Best Follower (BF) on Twitter.
In May, SocialRank announced it had raised $1 million in seed funding. In August, SocialRank partnered with Muhammad Ali, who gave away schwag to his top Twitter followers.
86. Steve Martocci and Matt Aimonetti
Cofounders, Splice
Last October, Group.me cofounders Steve Martocci and Matt Aimonetti launched his music collaboration startup, Splice.
Splice raised $4.5 million in a Series A round in September from WME, True Ventures, Plus Eight Equity Fund LP, AM Only, Tijs Michiel Verwest, Steve Angello, True Ventures, Union Square Ventures, and Scooter Braun.
In September, Martocci married Kelsey Falter, the founder and CEO of startup Poptip, who also made our SA 100 list.
85. Shan-lyn Ma, Nobu Nakaguchi, Felix Lung, and Kevin Ryan
Cofounders, Zola
Zola was founded in 2013 to reimagine the wedding registry. The e-commerce website provides easily customizable registry pages for couples — free.
Zola raised $3.3 million in November 2013 from Thrive Capital.
Disclosure: Kevin Ryan, a cofounder of Zola, is an investor in Business Insider.
84. Bart Stein and Nick Meyer
Cofounders, Sup
Sup, a messaging app that lets you share 10 seconds of video streaming at a time with your friends, is the brainchild of two former Yahoo employees, Nick Meyer and Bart Stein.
Stein had previously developed Stamped, the first acquisition Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer made, and helped lead Yahoo’s New York product office. One year after Meyer’s frequent-flyer company Milewise was acquired by Yahoo, he and Stein left to found Sup.
Sup raised a seed round of $1.5 million from Keith Rabois at Khosla Ventures. Fun fact: Rabois tried to acquire Stamped when he was an executive at Square, but Stein chose to get acquired by Yahoo instead.
83. Dan Teran and Saman Rahmanian
Cofounders, Managed By Q
Named for the Star Trek character and James Bond’s Q Branch, Managed By Q is a mobile platform that helps companies book cleaning services, making it easier than it traditionally has been for companies to schedule, manage, and pay the people who clean their offices.
In August, Managed By Q raised $775,000 from angel investors Scott Belsky, Ricky Van Veen, and Josh Abramson, Henrik Werdelin, Max Burger and Jay Livingston, Slow Ventures, Len Blavatink, and Alex Zubillaga. Companies like Elite Daily and Uber already use Q’s services.
82. Fritz Lanman and Alexandra Keating
Chairman and Cofounder at Doppler Labs/DWNLD, CEO and Cofounder of DWNLD
Angel investor Fritz Lanman launched wearable tech startup Doppler Labs this year. Doppler is run by Lanman, Noah Kraft, and Dan Wiggins, and its first project, which debuted in September, is called Dubs. Dubs are fancy, affordable earplugs. At $25, they’re a steal for concert-goers and the everyday person alike.
Lanman’s other endeavor, DWNLD, is a startup that turns websites and social media feeds into beautiful, responsive apps. Alexandra Keating is the CEO and cofounder of DWNLD, where she oversees an impressive team of engineers from places like Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Tumblr, Facebook, and Rent the Runway.
Previously, Keating was the vice president of marketing at Thrillist Media Group, where she was instrumental in the company’s 500% year-on-year growth.
81. Henrik Zillmer, Nicolas Michaelsen, Greg Roodt, and Morten Lund
Cofounders, AirHelp
AirHelp wants to help you get money back when your flight is delayed or cancelled. According to its founders, who cite the US Department of Transportation and the EU, if your flight is delayed three hours, no matter what airline you’re flying on, you’re entitled to up to $800 in compensation.
AirHelp will help you get that money back if you register your canceled or delayed flight with them. AirHelp says it’s worked with 45,000 passengers to get their money back. It completed the Y Combinator program during the spring and recently relocated its headquarters to New Y0rk City.
80. David Haber and Peyton Sherwood
Cofounders, Bond Street
Bond Street, which simplifies small-business loans, secured $1.5 million in seed funding this past February.
The startups investors include Homebrew, Founder Collective, Collaborative Fund, Matt Coffin, Red Swan, Rory Riggs, Larry Grafstein, Josh Koplewicz, and George Hornig. Bond Street also made its first hire: Jerry Weiss of Citibank joined the company as Chief Credit Officer.
Haber left his position at Spark Capital to start the company.
79. Jared Hecht
Founder, Fundera
Jared Hecht sold his first company, group-messaging app GroupMe to Skype, for $80 million just 370 days after it launched.
Hecht’s new startup, Fundera, seeks to help the founders of other small businesses get off the ground by connecting them with nonbank lenders who can provide them with loans. Hecht raised $3.4 million in January from investors such as First Round Capital, Lerer Ventures, Khosla Ventures, SV Angel, and David Tisch.
78. Katharine Zaleski and Milena Berry
Cofounders, PowerToFly
PowerToFly is a brand-new company that’s helping to bridge the gender gap in the startup world. Started by two women who are no strangers to startups themselves, PowerToFly connects companies that are looking to hire female tech talent with women anywhere in the world who are qualified for tech positions at startups. Its clients include Hearst, BuzzFeed, and RebelMouse.
77. Joe Marchese
Executive Chairman and Founder, Reserve
One startup being developed by Garrett Camp’s startup studio Expa is Reserve. Though it hasn’t launched yet, Joe Marchese’s Reserve will compete with services like OpenTable to offer real-time restaurant reservations online. It has raised a boatload of money from investors too.
Marchese is also the CEO of true[x], a digital adtech company, and previously he was an executive at Fuse TV. According to its website, Reserve will launch in New York and other cities this fall.
76. Logan Munro and Christina Mercando
Cofounders, Ringly
Smart-jewelry company Ringly is making wearable tech for women in the form of an 18-karat gold light-up cocktail ring that connects to a smartphone to notify the wearer when she gets a call or text.
You can customize and control the blinking lights and vibrations as well as which apps you receive notifications from. In April 2013, Christina Mercando quit her job to focus on Ringly. By August, Ringly had received $1 million in funding from Mesa+, First Round Capital, PCH, and Andreessen Horowitz.
Then they went to work building the prototype for four months in San Francisco. Ringly officially launched this summer, and each ring costs $145 to preorder. Once the preorder rings ship this fall, the price will go up to $195.
75. Luke Sherwin, Neil Parikh, Philip Krim, Jeff Chapin, and Gabe Flateman
Cofounders, Casper
The “Warby Parker of mattresses,” Casper takes the hassle out of buying a mattress by shipping big, fluffy mattresses to you in a box the size of a golf bag.
You order the mattresses from Casper’s website and they deliver it right to your door — and if you’re in New York City, they’ll deliver your mattress within two hours. The mattresses come in six sizes and cost between $500 and $950 with a 10-year warranty.
Casper generated $1 million in sales — its goal for all of 2014 — its first month. It raised $13.1 million in August in a Series A round from investors like Kevin Colleran of Slow Ventures, Vaizra Investments, Crosslink Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, and Cendana Capital.
74. Daniela and Jorge Perdomo
Cofounders, CEO, and CTO, goTenna
GoTenna is a pocket-sized device that solves the problem of having no WiFi. It pairs up with your smartphone to let you communicate — even when you don’t have service.
Cofounders Daniela and Jorge Perdomo came up with the idea for goTenna when they found themselves in the destruction in the wake of Superstorm Sandy in October 2012. By February 2013, Daniela had created physical prototypes for a gadget to help people communicate without service. In December 2013, goTenna raised $1.8 million in seed funding.
73. Patrick Moberg and Paul Murphy
Creators, TwoDots by Betaworks
Moberg and Murphy have followed their highly addicting puzzle game Dots with TwoDots, which takes you on a 135-level adventure with the game’s two main characters, Amelia and Jacques. In just a few days it rose to the top free app in Apple’s App Store, where it stayed for two weeks. It got 6 million downloads in its first two weeks, according to the New York Post.
Last year, Dots was among the hottest iPhone games. After just a week, more than 1 million people played the game more than 25 million times. Within 16 days, users had played the game 100 million times.
72. Yosef Lerner and Quinn Hu
Founder and CEO, Distractify
Distractify started as a three-person bootstrapped media venture, founded by then 20-year-old Quinn Hu. It’s one of several media startups capitalizing on Upworthy’s formula — Distractify’s stories are largely positive and uplifting and tend to feature cute animals, a combination that has led the company to finding massive viral success, mostly through Facebook shares.
Its traffic has spiked and plummeted throughout the year, however, and Distractify struggled in December when Facebook announced changes to its newsfeed algorithm.
In June, Distractify raised $7 million in a Series A round from CAA Ventures, Lerer Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
71. Jonathan Wegener and Benny Wong
Cofounders, CEO, Timehop
Jonathan Wegener cofounded Timehop with Benny Wong in 2010. Timehop acts like a digital time capsule, aggregating all your Facebook posts, tweets, Foursquare check-ins, and Instagram pictures. Every day you can check the app or receive a daily Timehop email reminding you what you posted on social media on that day a year ago.
The nostalgic startup raised a $10 million Series B round in July from investors Spark Capital, Randi Zuckerberg, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Spark, and Shasta Ventures.
70. Erica Cerulo and Claire Mazur
Cofounders, Of A Kind
In 2010, Claire Mazur and Erica Cerulo started Of A Kind to help indie designers sell their stuff by telling their stories to customers and creating a relationship between the two.
Of A Kind is entirely bootstrapped — Mazur and Cerulo have never raised venture capital funding — but despite that, according to Forbes, the website is “already generating seven-figure sales.”
69. Adi Sideman
CEO, YouNow
Serial entrepreneur Adi Sideman is the CEO of YouNow, a video streaming social network that lets you broadcast yourself to a live audience. With a 20-person staff and funding from Venrock, Union Square Ventures, and angel investor Oren Zeev, three-year-old YouNow grew by 10x in 2014. YouNow has more than 100,000 unique broadcasts daily and more than 100 million user sessions monthly.
68. Eric Lubow, Russell Bradberry, Edward Kim
Cofounders, CTO, Head Architect, and CEO
SimpleReach is an ad-tech company that measures native advertising and content marketing. It’s how sites like BuzzFeed can tell what content to promote and send viral on platforms like Facebook.
Under the leadership of Eddie Kim and cofounder Eric Lubow, SimpleReach raised $9 million in July from High Peaks Venture Partners, Village Ventures, Atlas Venture, and MK Capital.
67. David Tisch, Ara Katz, Alan Tisch, and Octavian Costache
Cofounders, Spring
David Tisch, who cofounded the investment fund BoxGroup in 2009 and is the former managing director of TechStars NYC, has a new mobile e-commerce startup: Spring.
Cofounded by Ara Katz, Alan Tisch, and Octavian Coastache, Spring wants to give you the best possible experience for buying stuff on your phone or tablet. Spring raised a $7.5 million Series A round in July from investors like Slow Ventures, Kevin Colleran, Founder Collective, SV Angel, Google Ventures, and BoxGroup. It launched with 300 retail partners and makes buying and shopping for clothing items as easy as dragging your finger across the screen.
66. Izzie Lerer and Kerry Lauerman
Cofounders and Editor-at-Large, The Dodo
Izzie Lerer cofounded The Dodo — a media company focused on content about animals — in January. It hit 1 million uniques in its first month, faster than any media company her father, Huffington Post cofounder Ken Lerer, says he’s ever seen. Kerry Lauerman, a senior editor at The Washington Post, serves as Lerer’s cofounder and editor-at-large of The Dodo.
In September, The Dodo received a $4.68 million Series A funding round led by Discovery, with participation from investors SoftBank Capital, Sterling Equities, Greycroft Partners, and RRE Ventures. The Dodo has also received $2 million in seed funding from Lerer Ventures, Greycroft, Softbank Capital, Sterling Equities, and RRE.
65. Kegan Schouwenburg and Joel Wishkovsky
Founder, CEO, Sols
Sols, the “future of footwear,” was cofounded by Kegan Schouwenburg and Joel Wishkovsky in 2013. Using 3D printing, Sols works with physical therapists, podiatrists, and orthopedic doctors to provide customizable, orthopedic insoles for their patients.
The startup raised $6.4 million in a Series A round in April from investors including Grape Arbor VC, FundersGuild, Felicis Ventures, Rothenberg Ventures, RRE Ventures, and Founders Fund.
64. Darren Lachtman and Rob Fishman
Cofounders, Niche
Darren Lachtman and Rob Fishman are the cofounders of Niche, a startup that helps users popular on platforms like Vine, Instagram, and Tumblr monetize their popularity.
In May, Niche raised $2.5 million in seed funding from Slow Ventures, BoxGroup, Gary Vaynerchuk, Kevin Colleran, WME, Advancit Capital, SV Angel, Lerer Ventures, and SoftTech VC. It’s expected to generate $5-10 million in revenue its first year.
63. Adam Sager, Chris Rill, and Jon Troutman
Cofounders, Canary
Last fall, smart home security system startup Canary garnered $1.96 million during its IndieGogo campaign — 1,962% of its initial $100,000 goal — in crowdfunded money from 7,400 backers. It’s like Dropcam, a company Google acquired for $500 million, except the camera goes above your front door and strives to detect strange movements and potential break-ins.
In March, Canary raised $10 million in a Series A round of funding from Khosla Ventures, Bobby Yazdani, and Two Sigma Ventures. Canary will soon deliver its product to its Indiegogo backers.
62. Aaron Schildkrout and Brian Schechter
Cofounders, HowAboutWe
It’s been an eventful year for dating website HowAboutWe, which lets its users post and browse date ideas.
It acquired Nerve, a sex-culture website in January, and got acquired by IAC — which also owns OKCupid and Match.com — in July. But the acquisition wasn’t seamless; IAC encouraged HowAboutWe to lay off a bunch of people after the sale.
61. Keenan Cummings and Jeremy Fisher
Cofounders, Wander
Photo-journaling startup Wander was acquired by Yahoo in February for a rumored ~$10 million.
A TechStars NYC Summer 2012 company, Wander had raised $1.2 million in funding from Collaborative Fund, Google Ventures, Red Swan Ventures, SV Angel, NextView Ventures, SoftTech VC, BoxGroup, and eVisibility.
60. Kelsey Falter
Founder, Poptip
Before Poptip existed, Kelsey Falter was a college student working on markover.com — a site that allowed creative people to collaborate together in real time. She submitted an application to TechStars and left Notre Dame just a few credits shy of a degree to pursue Poptip, a service that provides instant feedback for companies through polls conducted on social media.
After raising $2.4 million, Poptip was acquired in July by Palantir Technologies. Fun fact: In September, she married another SA100 honoree, GroupMe’s and Splice’s Steve Martocci.
59. Amanda Peyton, Joe Lallouz, and Aaron Henshaw
Cofounders, Grand Street
Amanda Peyton, Joe Lallouz, and Aaron Henshaw launched Grand Street last year as a marketplace to offer the latest electronics gadgets to members every other day. Its appeal comes from the fast that it’s a flash-sales site, so you need to act fast. Grand Street sets itself apart by testing every gadget it sells.
In April, Etsy, the online marketplace for handmade goods, bought Grand Street. Both marketplaces plan to operate independently.
58. Tobias Peggs, Michael Galpert, Avi Muchnick, and Israel Dirdik
CEO and Cofounders, Aviary
Photo-editing platform Aviary was acquired by Adobe in September for an undisclosed amount of money. A blog post from Aviary CEO Tobias Peggs said the acquisition would cause no disruption of service to Aviary’s tools.
Peggs also said Aviary plans to “add additional components and services for developers to incorporate – such as the ability to save creations to Creative Cloud in Adobe file formats, access Photoshop technology, and connect creativity across devices using the Creative SDK.”
57. Mark Halperin, John Heilemann, Justin Smith, and Joshua Topolsky
Managing Editor of Bloomberg Politics, CEO of Bloomberg Media, Editor of Bloomberg Digital
In March, Bloomberg Media CEO — and former CEO of The Atlantic — Justin Smith published a letter on Bloomberg’s website and announced the new direction he intended to take Bloomberg Media. Smith’s plan is to broaden Bloomberg’s content beyond finance and create digital-first media brands.
In May, Time magazine’s senior political analyst Mark Halperin and New York Magazine national affairs editor John Heilemann joined Bloomberg Politics. In July, Joshua Topolsky, cofounder and editor in chief of Vox Media-owned The Verge, announced he’d be leaving to head up Bloomberg Digital as its editor.
56. Nilay Patel
Editor-in-Chief, The Verge
This summer, Nilay Patel replaced Joshua Topolsky as editor-in-chief of tech news website The Verge. Patel initially came to The Verge in 2011 as the website’s managing editor, and spent part of 2014 working at The Verge’s sister site, Vox.com.
Patel’s new role at The Verge came about after Topolsky announced he would be leaving The Verge to move over to Bloomberg to serve as an editor at Bloomberg Digital and chief digital content officer at Bloomberg Media.
55. Alexandra Chong
Founder, Lulu
Lulu lets women anonymously rate men they know. The app, which pulls in Facebook information to detect your gender, lets women discuss a guy’s ambition, appearance, and more using mini quizzes and hashtags.
This year, Lulu decided to let men sign on to the app too. Guys can check their scores (from 0 to 10) on the Lulu app, and can receive analytics about their profiles (including the number of women who have searched for them, rated them, and followed them). Allison Schwartz, who launched the app with Chong, says over 1 million guys have downloaded Lulu.
54. Amy Jain and Daniella Yacobovsky
Cofounders, BaubleBar
Daniella Yacobovsky and Amy Jain are cofounders of BaubleBar, an e-commerce site specializing in jewelry. Earlier this year, BaubleBar experimented with brick-and-mortar stores, launching Nordstrom Loves BaubleBar popup shops in 35 Nordstroms.
BaubleBar raised $10 million in a Series B round in July, from investors like Greycroft Partners, Accel Partners, Comcast Ventures, TriplePoint Capital, Aspect Ventures, and Burch Creative Capital.
53. Neil Capel and Ian White
Cofounders, CEO, CTO, Sailthru
Sailthru is working to personalize email marketing. Sailthru most recently completed its Series C round of funding, raising $20 million in December 2013 from Occam Partners, AOL Ventures, DFJ Gotham Ventures, RRE Ventures, Benchmark, and Scale Venture Partners.
In total, Sailthru has raised $48 million in four rounds from 12 investors.
52. Nigel Eccles and Tom Griffiths
Cofounders, CEO, CPO, FanDuel
Nigel Eccles and Tom Griffiths are the cofounders of FanDuel, a fantasy sports startup built for casual or busy fans. Instead of lasting all season, FanDuel’s leagues last for short bursts, like a day or a week.
FanDuel raised $70 million in a Series D round of funding this September, led by Shamrock Capital Advisors, NBC Sports Ventures and KKR. The company will generate $40 million in revenue this year.
51. Eli Broverman and Jon Stein
Cofounders, Betterment
In April, online investment startup Betterment raised a $32 million Series C round from Menlo Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Anthemis Group, Citi Ventures, Northwestern Mutual, and Globespan Capital Partners. It has raised more than $45 million total.
In October 2013, Betterment acquired ImpulseSave, a banking platform that lets people save money via an app and on e-commerce sites. In the past year, Jon Stein and Eli Broverman have grown the business from managing $300 million to nearly $1 billion.
The team nearly tripled to 80 employees in 2014.
50. Dane Atkinson and Davin Chew
CEO, CTO, SumAll
Business intelligence and analytics company SumAll provides real-time data monitoring, social-media insights, and more for over 40,000 companies. Last year it acquired media-monitoring company TwentyFeet.
It raised $4 million in a Series A round from Battery Ventures, Wellington Partners, and Silicon Valley Bank in December. Sumall tracks more than $4 billion worth of commerce data, 53 billion visits and half a billion social interactions. Previously, Atkinson was CEO of SquareSpace.
49. Jason Goldberg
CEO, Cofounder, Fab
This year was another roller-coaster year for e-commerce startup Fab. It bought <a href="http://www.businessinsider.c