#topstartup

Great businesses can be launched any time, even when there's a downturn in funding. While the start of 2016 might have spelled trouble for some well-established startups, it also saw the birth of companies tackling things like a cure for cancer, superfast internet, and competition for Uber........ 1. Uber

Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp founded UberCab in 2009. The company officially launched its ride-hailing service and mobile application in San Francisco in 2011 and changed the name to

Uber

. It has expanded its service to 390 cities worldwide in a couple of years.The company, which takes a 20 percent cut of each ride, recorded revenues of more than

$400 million

in 2014. Uber Technologies Inc. completed a new funding round in July 2015 that valued the company at close to $51 billion.Its success story has led to the emergence of rivals like Lyft and an opposition from the incumbent taxi industry and regulators. The service has been banned in some areas due to concerns about

safety

.The rapid increase in Uber’s valuation reflects its aggressive growth as well as the rising popularity of its service among riders.

2. Xiaomi

Xiaomi

Corp., headquartered in Beijing, is the world’s

fourth largest

smartphone maker after Samsung, Apple, and Huawei. The company designs, develops, and sells smartphones, mobile apps, and related electronics.It has achieved 30 percent growth in sales in 2015 and has a significant presence in China, India, and Southeast Asia.The company set a mark recognized by

Guinness

World Record by selling more than 2 million handsets online in 24 hours that offered discounts on its fifth birthday (April 6, 2015).Critics said Xiaomi’s phones and tablets are very similar to Apple’s. In addition, the company’s chairman

Lei Jun

, the

fifth richest

man in China, has carefully cultivated a Steve Jobs image and is considered as a “

knockoff

of Steve Jobs.”Xiaomi raised $1.1 billion in 2014, at a valuation of

$46 billion

. This is a dramatic growth from the last time the company raised money in June 2012 at a valuation of $4 billion.However, this whopping valuation may not be

sustainable

, according to experts. With the economic slowdown in China, the company is expected to miss its sales targets.

3. Airbnb

Founded in 2008,

Airbnb

 is a social website that connects people looking to rent their homes to people who are looking for local accommodations. It operates in more than 34,000 cities and 190 countries. It was founded by Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk in San Francisco.Airbnb’s valuation has been driven by its solid growth in the last few years. Its estimated revenues for 2015 were $900 million.Airbnb Inc. raised a new round of funding in November 2015 that valued the company at

$25.5 billion

. With this valuation, Airbnb surpasses the market value of major hotel chains like Hilton ($21.0 billion), Marriott ($17.9 billion), and Starwood ($12.9 billion).

4. Palantir

Palantir

Technologies, Inc. is a private American software and services company, specializing in data analysis. The company’s

software

is used by government agencies such as the CIA and the FBI to visualize relationships among large amounts of data.Palantir is best known for

helping

the U.S. government track down al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.It was founded in 2004 by five partners and is currently led by CEO

Alex Karp

who has no background in technology. Karp holds a doctoral degree in neoclassical social theory.Palantir has recently raised funds at a

$20.3 billion

valuation, up from $15 billion in 2014. This new valuation made Palantir the fourth most highly valued startup, just after Airbnb, Xiaomi, and Uber.It is one of the largest private employers in Palo Alto, California, with more than 2,000 employees. The company is keen on staying private and will not be filing for a public offering.

5. Meituan-Dianping

Meituan-Dianping is China’s largest group deals website. The company offers deals of the day by selling vouchers on local services and entertainment including movie tickets and restaurant bookings. Its services are in some ways

similar

to the services sold by Groupon and Yelp of the United States.The company was formed by the merger of two rival startups, Meituan and Dianping in October 2015. It has 150 million monthly active users and its total transaction volume reached

$25.8 billion

in 2015.In its largest single funding round in January, the company was valued at

$18 billion

.

6. Snapchat

Snapchat

is a video messaging application Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown Poster created when they were students at Stanford University.Compared with Twitter and Facebook, Snapchat is considered

user-unfriendly,

especially for people new to the application.The application, which is popular among millennials, reaches 100 million people per day.Its annual revenue is roughly

$200 million

, according to media estimates, which is weaker than other tech startup revenues. However, the company has become an attractive advertising platform for big names like PepsiCo, Budweiser, and Amazon.com because of Snapchat’s Super Bowl coverage.But the company needs to sell more advertisements especially to small and midsize businesses, according to experts.Snapchat Inc. acquired $175 million in new funding in February, valuing the company at the same

$16 billion

valuation from a year ago. Despite its staggering growth, investors are worried about the company’s prospects, which put pressure on the valuation.

7. WeWork

An office-sharing startup

WeWork

operates in more than 20 cities across North America, Europe, and Israel. Its customers are mainly startups, freelancers, and small businesses who can pay a monthly fee for access to workspaces at one or several locations.It completed a round of funding in March this year that puts the company’s value at $16 billion. It is the latest startup to be valued at above $10 billion and is now tied with Snapchat and Didi Kuaidi for sixth place in the list of the world’s most valuable startups.

WeWork

was founded by Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey in 2010 and is headquartered in New York City.It was named among the “most innovative companies” by

Fast Company

magazine.

8. Didi Kuaidi

Didi Kuaidi

(also known as Didi Chuxing) is the biggest ride-hailing company in China. It was formed in 2015 by the merger of the two largest taxi hailing firms Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache.It is headquartered in Beijing and backed by Alibaba and Tencent, China’s two largest Internet companies. Its biggest rival is UberChina.Didi Kuaidi raised $3 billion from investors in September 2015 at a valuation of

$16 billion

. UberChina raised $1.2 billion the same year at a valuation of more than $8 billion.Didi Kuaidi recently has received additional

$1 billion

in commitments for a new fundraising round, according to media reports. Once the financing closes, it would value the company at more than $20 billion.

9. Flipkart

Flipkart

is India’s largest e-commerce company. It was founded in 2007 by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal who both worked for Amazon.com and left to create their own e-commerce platform.Flipkart Internet Pvt. raised $550 million in May 2015, in a deal that valued the startup at about

$15 billion

.Flipkart sold more than $6 billion worth of goods in 2015, according to the estimates however it is still not profitable, which may put downward pressure on its valuation.Three mutual funds that invested in Flipkart lowered their valuations of the company by more than

20 percent

in March. Despite the fact that Indians are accessing the Internet at a record rate, only a small percentage of them shop online. This may put downward pressure on Flipkart’s valuation, according to experts.

10. SpaceX

Headquartered in Hawthorne, California, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (

SpaceX

) designs, manufactures, and launches rockets and spacecraft. It was founded in 2002 by former PayPal entrepreneur and Tesla Motors CEO

Elon Musk

who aims to build simple and relatively inexpensive reusable rockets.Google invested $900 million for a 7.5 percent stake in SpaceX in January 2015. This implies a valuation of

$12 billion

for the company. .

11. Starry

Launched in January

by the former CEO of Aereo, Chet Kanojia, Starry will sell wireless equipment that will deliver supercharged internet speeds up to 1 gigabit per second. That's fast enough to download a two-hour movie in a just a few seconds.Starry makes a receiver called the Starry Point that hangs out your window like an antenna. You can hook up your own wireless receiver or use its own Starry Station, a $350 device that can tell you right from its screen how fast your internet is performing.Funding: Unknown, backed by FirstMark Capital, Tiger Global, IAC, KKR, HLVP, and Quantum Strategic Partners.Website:

https://starry.com/

12. JuiceroSimply described as the "Keurig for juice," the three-year-old startup finally launched out of stealth in February. The product is a smart, Wi-Fi-connected kitchen appliance that presses pouches the size of IV bags into tasty concoctions of fresh fruits and veggies. There's no preparation, mess, or cleanup — you simply slip in the pouch, press a button, and out pours your juice.It starts at $699, a price tag that

has drawn criticism about the young startup

, but its investors believe the price will decrease as the company matures.Funding: More than $100 million from Campbell Soup, Google Ventures, Artis Ventures, and Kleiner Perkins, with additional funding from Two Sigma Ventures, First Beverage Group, Acre Ventures, Double Bottom Line Ventures, Thrive Capital, and Vast Ventures, among others.Website:

https://www.juicero.com/

13. CheddarJon Steinberg, former president of BuzzFeed and CEO of Daily Mail US,

founded Cheddar

to present business news with a twist for millennials.

Now using a paywall

, the company has short clips of its interviews for free but is hoping business-savvy 20-somethings will pay to have news tailored to their interests.Funding: $3.1 million from Lightspeed's Jeremy Liew, Homebrew, and Vivi Nevo.Website:

http://www.cheddar.com/

14. GrailbioThe "anti-Uber startup" Juno was founded

by Talmon Marco

, an entrepreneur who made a fortune when Viber, the messaging app he founded, sold to Rakuten for $900 million. Basically, Juno says it's much friendlier to drivers than Uber and Lyft — it takes a smaller share of the profit, leaving more for drivers. So far, it's only in beta in New York City, so

only a small group of people have tried it

.Funding: Reportedly

raising a $30 million round

.Website:

https://www.gojuno.com/

15. OTTOSelf-driving trucks might hit the streets before self-driving cars. A team made up of former employees from Google, Apple, and Tesla is developing sensors and software to retrofit trucks into autonomous fleets. Otto's kits can turn any "dumb" truck built after 2013 into a "smart" driverless vehicle — for a ticket price of $30,000,

according to Wired.

Funding: Unknown.Website:

http://ot.to/

16. FlyziplineFor the last five years, the Zipline team has been secretly working on its lifesaving mission. In April,

the company revealed its project

to the world: a drone that could deliver up to 3 pounds of blood or medicine. And it's not just an idea — the company is scheduled to start making drops to health clinics in Rwanda in July in partnership with the country's government.Funding:

$18 million

from Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang, and others.Website:

http://flyzipline.com/product/

17. NanitComputer vision and parenting are two things that normally don't go together, but Nanit is a smart baby camera that combines them. The camera watches your baby sleep, giving you not only an eye into the crib, but also data about how your baby sleeps. It tracks things like how long it takes your infant to fall back asleep and provides a heat map of where in the crib they love to sleep.Funding:

$6.6 million

from Upfront Ventures as well as RRE, 645 Ventures, Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute, Flex, and Jerry Yang’s AME Cloud Ventures.Website:

https://www.nanit.com/

18. The Billion Dollar Startup Club

Billion Dollar Club It used to be that a startup worth more than $1 billion was a unicorn, a creature so rare as to be quasi-magical. 2014 was the year of the unicorn stampede.These 15 startups, the most highly valued private businesses in Silicon Valley, are making investors very, very happy.

Website: /

http://graphics.wsj.com/billion-dollar-club/

19. Dropbox

More than 25 million users rely on Dropbox to store and access their files. In turn, the service has raised $507 million from investors like Accel Partners and Y Combinator and is currently valued at $10 billion. By comparison, its closest rival, Box, has raised $545 million and is valued at $2.4 billion, not enough to make this list.

Website:

https://www.dropbox.com/

20. Jingdong

China's answer to Amazon, giant online retailer Jingdong (JD.com) has raised  $2.2 billion and is valued at $7.3 billion. Could it continue to raise funds and top Alibaba's blockbuster IPO?

Website:

http://www.jd.com/

21. Square

A formidable player in mobile payments, Square has raised $495 million. At least $25 million came from Starbucks, which installed the Square payments system in 7,000 of its U.S. locations in 2012. The startup is currently valued at $6 billion.

Website:

https://squareup.com/

22. PinterestThe digital scrapbook service has become a staple of the visual Web. After raising $800 million from its committed investors, the startup is currently valued at $5 billion.

Website:

https://www.pinterest.com/

23. Cloudera

The big data software provider may not be a household name, but it did manage to raise $1.2 billion. A large sum of it, $900 million, came from Intel. Cloudera is currently valued at $4.1 billion.

Website:

http://www.cloudera.com/

24. Spotify

Taylor Swift may not be a fan, but one of her corporate sponsors, Coca-Cola, is investing in Spotify. The music streaming service has raised a total of $521 million, for a valuation of $4 billion. Not bad for an unprofitable business model.

Website:

https://www.spotify.com/

25. JawboneA pioneer in developing wearable devices, Jawbone has raised $531 million from investors like Andreessen Horowitz and Khosla Ventures. The fitness tracker maker is currently valued at $3.3 billion.Website:

https://jawbone.com/

26. Fanatics

The largest online retailer of licensed sportswear, Fanatics sold more than $1 billion worth of merchandise in 2013. Founded in 1995, the e-commerce site survived the dot-com bust and has gone on to raise $320 million. The company's valuation currently sits at $3.1 billion.

Website:

http://www.fanatics.com/

27.  Lending ClubFast-growing peer-to-peer lending service Lending Club filed for IPO this year. As of April, the lender's total equity funding consisted of $155 million for a valuation of $3.8 billion.Website: