Startup companies

Startup companies

When I was young, I always dreamed of doing something I loved. The idea that people can build a life for themselves with their passion spoke deeply to me. I was around 13 when I first sparked the idea to start my own business, and that inspiration sat with me for about five years before I finally did it. With the help and collaboration of my roommate, we opened our small online business, Celestial Creations by Artsy and Reneé.

The Silicon Valley startup, which builds technology to help people build apps and websites with AI, expects to surpass $1 billion in revenue by next year, its CEO and founder Amjad Masad told Business Insider. That's about four times as much as the $240 million in annual sales that Replit is now generating, Masad added. Masad disclosed the updated projections after Business Insider obtained a leaked memo for investors from this summer, showing it projected $1 billion by the end of 2027.

San Francisco is getting a symbolic jolt very soon as newly elected Mayor Daniel Lurie steps onto the Disrupt stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, October 27-29 at Moscone West, in a homecoming of sorts for both tech and the city that helped define it. Disrupt has long been a launchpad for founders and investors chasing the next wave. Lurie's visit signals a renewed effort to weave innovation back into San Francisco's future. Register now to save up to $444 on your pass, and get 60% off a +1 ticket.

Seun Sodipo is the new chief financial officer at Plaid, a fintech startup that connects financial institutions. Sodipo brings a seasoned background in guiding high-growth businesses through strategic transformation and scaling. Seun Sodipo, CFO of Plaid Previously, Sodipo served as CFO at Glossier, where she led the company's evolution from a direct-to-consumer pioneer to a fast-growing omnichannel beauty brand across North America and Europe.

We're a team of problem solvers,

In Rochester, weed isn't just a pastime - it's part of a growing movement built on artistry, resilience, and pride. The city's consumers want fire weed that reflects their energy: potent, pure, and made with real intention. That's exactly what Silly Nice delivers. A Black-Owned, Veteran-Owned, and New York-based craft brand, Silly Nice produces small-batch weed using sustainable materials, transparent lab testing, and top-tier formulations. It's everything Rochester represents - smart, creative, and rooted in community.

Kevin Hartz tends to be first through the door. In 2001, he co-founded Xoom, back when sending money across borders meant standing in line at Western Union. In 2013, it went public, and in 2015, PayPal paid $1.1 billion for it. Four years after launching Xoom, he co-founded Eventbrite, which went public in 2018 and turned buying event tickets into something you could do without wanting to throw your laptop in the ocean.

"Our users are very young," Pei said on Alex Heath's Access podcast this week. "It's pretty much impossible to be popular among everybody in the world at the very beginning, so we got to pick a lane." Pei said the company has found that its products resonate best with younger consumers who are motivated by a desire to "be different" and find their "own identity" in the devices they choose.

You've probably heard of House of Highlights-even if you're not a sports fan, it's hard to miss, whether on YouTube or scrolling through your social feeds. What started as a college dorm Instagram account has grown over 11 years into the #1 sports media brand on the platform, boasting 100 million followers and billions of monthly views. Today, House of Highlights is a multi-platform sports media powerhouse, producing creator-led content and original series that rival traditional TV.

At first, cancer is a quiet disease. Inside the body, cells are aggressively multiplying out of control, changing everything. But on the outside, there's nothing special to see or feel. Not yet. For Guardant co-CEO Helmy Eltoukhy, that invisibility looked like an engineering challenge. What if cancer could be detected early - through blood tests - before you even knew it was there?

The New York cannabis scene has evolved at a breakneck pace. From Manhattan rooftops to upstate lounges, the conversation among enthusiasts has shifted from simply to finding weed that hits harder. Modern consumers want potency with purpose, products that deliver elevated effects without sacrificing purity or sustainability. New York's best weed isn't about hype-it's about craftsmanship. Small-batch producers are now redefining quality by prioritizing transparency, clean extraction, and locally sourced materials.

This year's speaker lineup features impressive names sharing insights on the future of AI, funding, space, scaling breakthrough ideas, and more, including: Will Grannis, CTO, Google Cloud Jen Hoskins, startups head of cloud and partnerships, NVIDIA Sachin Kansal, chief product officer, Uber Technologies Marc Manara, head of startups, OpenAI Elizabeth Stone, chief product officer, Netflix Tristan Thompson, NBA Champion and Fintech Entrepreneur And many more leaders from Zoom, Amazon, Tinder, Meta, and more Check out our full list of speakers here.

Indian quick commerce startup Zepto said it has raised $400 million in a funding round led by a new investor, California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), a U.S.-based pension fund. The round, which is a mix of primary and secondary investment, also has participation from existing investors, including Avenir, Avra, Lightspeed, Glade Brook, The Stepstone Group, and Nexus Venture Partners. After this funding, the company plans to go public next year.

Internal documents obtained by Business Insider reveal that AWS has flagged a "fundamental" shift in how startups are allocating their cloud budgets. Increasingly, they're delaying AWS cloud adoption and diverting spending toward AI models, inference, and AI developer tools. Instead of pouring money into traditional cloud services like compute and storage, these companies are spreading costs across newer AI technologies that are easier to switch between, according to the documents.

In August, Harvey said it would give six law schools access to the platform as part of a new "alliance." The next month, it onboarded 11 more law schools. Now, Harvey has added Duke Law and Northwestern Pritzker Law to the roster, the company tells Business Insider. Participation in the program is available to the law schools free of charge.

When a door broke loose on a new electric bus in Des Moines, Iowa, and nearly fell off, it was one in a long list of problems for the local transit agency. The city began using its fleet of seven electric buses, made by the startup Proterra, in 2021. The vehicles soon showed defects in the suspensions, weatherproofing, and wheelchair ramps. After only 18 months of use-and unsuccessful attempts to get the manufacturer to fix the problems-the agency had to pull them off the road.

In this episode of From the Ground Up, Inc. editor-in-chief Mike Hofmansits down down with Shuman Ghosemajumder, co-founder and CEO of the AI cybersecurity startup Reken, Ben Goodwin, co-founder, and CEO, of the prebiotic soda company Olipop, and Melissa Mash, co-founder and CEO of the fashion and lifestyle brand Dagne Dover. The conversation explores what it really means to have fun at work again-and why joy and creativity are essential ingredients for sustainable growth.

"This notion that somehow you can achieve greatness, you can build something extraordinary by working 38 hours a week and having work life balance, that is mind-boggling to me," Andrew Feldman, cofounder and CEO of $8.1 billion AI chip company Cerebras, stressed recently on the 20VC podcast. "It's not true in any part of life." As many U.S. workers push for shorter workweeks, America's founders are still sticking with "grindset" culture as the formula for trillion-dollar success.

The whole thing works like this: exhausted job seekers upload their résumé and format their personal info. Once up and running, they're presented with various gigs one by one, which they can swipe left to reject, or right to apply - just like a dating app. When a user swipes right, Sorce's "AI agent" navigates to the company's website and applies on their behalf.

You get to brush up on your soft skills while picking up technical skills like financial modeling. The biggest lesson I learned from my time in investment banking was how to perform a wide variety of tasks efficiently. It also taught me how to ask the right questions when evaluating businesses. Working on deals honed my intellectual curiosity and sharpened my judgment when making investment decisions.

Michael Dell founded his namesake company in 1984. Since then, dozens of consumer tech companies have risen and fallen - and he says he knows why. On the "Founders" podcast, Dell said that he watched many of his competitors make critical judgment errors. While he said there were many he could list off, three were top of mind. "I mean, there are lots of ways to fail, right?" Dell said.

You don't need months or years to validate a business idea, and taking that long is incredibly risky. Waiting to prove your business model can result in a lot of wasted time and money, but one entrepreneur recently discovered how to validate any business idea within a matter of days. This business owner shared the details on Reddit. "Could I get strangers to care about my ideas in less than a weekend?" the Redditor asked this question as a challenge.

Looking for a new job has always been, generally speaking, a massive pain in the ass. These days, this pain is often inflicted bureaucratically, through firms' opaque and mysterious hiring systems and the online platforms job seekers use to find them in the first place. The basic complaint spans industries: Sparse listings on exploitative sites are overwhelmed with applicants who, after applying, never hear back, not even with a rejection (were the listings even real?).

That's where Knapsack comes in. It's a collaboration platform specifically designed for enterprises that need to resolve misunderstandings between UI designers, product managers, and engineers. Knapsack creates a unified workspace that connects with tools like Figma and Git, ensuring that any design changes are automatically updated in the code and documentation. This approach makes sure that everything remains up to date, so branding stays consistent across all digital products.

Just a few years ago, space startups were selling investors on visions of a rapidly expanding commercial market for weather monitoring, broadband, and remote-sensing satellites. Astra, for example, told investors in its 2021 SPAC deck that it would eventually launch hundreds of rockets per year to serve a growing small satellite market. Relativity Space pitched investors on a 3D printing revolution that would make rockets cheap enough to unlock large commercial demand.