Among the nation’s trendiest Southeastern cities, Raleigh ranks as one of the most popular for young professionals. The city’s population has grown by 20.5 percent since 2010, which means the city’s residential community has increased by 232,000 in that time, according to reports. As is the case with other fast-growing cities across the country, Raleigh’s burgeoning populace has been accompanied by an increase in tech ventures. According to the The News & Observer, Raleigh ranks as the second best city in the nation for tech job opportunities, falling closely behind Austin in terms of livability and economic growth.
With its strong ties to the Research Triangle, Raleigh is unsurprisingly a top city for tech startups, and that may have a lot to do with the state’s academic prowess. According to Forbes, NC State has spawned more than 170 university startups, which have generated $1.7 billion in VC funding. UNC Chapel Hill also boasts a large number of tech competitors including emerging companies like Dualogics and Enzerna Biosciences. With its academic standing and thriving economy, Raleigh has created its own multi-faceted tech ecosystem, composed of many up-and-coming startups. While one is working on the future of farming, another is developing new ways to mitigate the challenges of chronic asthma. For these Raleigh startups, discovering groundbreaking approaches to everyday problems is key to turning the city into a top tech hub.
Raleigh Startups to Know
- Farm Further
- Liine
- Pryon
- Aristotle Health
- Silbo
- CurEat App
- VitalFlo
- Alumshares
Top Startups in Raleigh
Founded: 2016
Focus: Sports Digital Marketplace
What they do: Established by Paul Dorney, Silbo has created a digital marketplace that connects game providers to sports officials. The platform enables youth and adult leagues, clubs and tournaments to post their games online, making them accessible for officials to find. The Go Silbo app allows sports officials to choose when, where, and for what wage they will officiate, while enabling game providers to more efficiently schedule, pay and communicate with officials.
Founded: 2016
Focus: Futuristic Farming
What they do: Farm Further aims to modernize traditional farming through the marriage of technology and farming best practices. Utilizing symbiotic optimization, the company stacks production of multiple products on top of one another, thus increasing aggregate output and improving soil fertility, carbon sequestration and long-term yields. The company’s farms are built on portable and modular infrastructure, which enables the team to scale up and down to accommodate the changing seasons and needs of the land at certain points in time.
Founded: 2015
Focus: Charitable Sports Betting
What they do: GoodBookey offers an app that lets users bet against their friends on their favorite sports games. After selecting an upcoming event and inviting a friend to challenge them, users can choose a charity and indicate the amount they wished to be donated upon completion of the game. GoodBookey partners with a variety of charities such as the American Cancer Society, Big Brothers Big Sisters and Hope Connection International.
Founded: 2014
Focus: Insurance
What they do: Policygenius provides a simpler solution for comparing insurance quotes online, operating a user-friendly platform packed with learning resources, comparative tools and methods of application. Quotes on everything from life and homeowner’s insurance to auto, disability, health, pet, and renter’s insurance are available from via Policygenius’s marketplace, saving users time and money while ensuring they have all the coverage they need.
Founded: 2016
Focus: Digital Restaurant Finder
What they do: CurEat App helps people find curated, independent restaurants in their area. The app helps users discover local food enthusiasts, read news related to new restaurants and culinary trends, and upload photos of their own restaurant experiences to share with the rest of the community. Users can also bookmark restaurants they’d like to visit, make reservations, view restaurant menus and hours, and provide feedback to restaurant owners.
Founded: 2017
Focus: Alumni Investing
What they do: Alumshares connects alumni with opportunities to invest in breakout companies. The company identifies investment opportunities with attractive risk-reward characteristics and then creates a legal investment vehicle for the alumni community, thus enabling alumni to purchase shares, track investments and realize returns. Alumshares’ aim is to help alumni get ahead and accelerate the next generation of groundbreaking companies by giving alumni the opportunity to own a piece of the companies they’ve supported.
Founded: 2015
Focus: Healthcare Digital Products
What they do: Aristotle Health develops products for patients and providers to gain access to better treatment plans and pricing data. Their HealthForce platform allows providers to follow the status of patients and clinics and manage their staff and network, while CareCheck serves as a pricing and treatment data tool that helps patients, insurers and employers manage their healthcare costs. Aristotle Health is dedicated to helping patients find the most affordable treatment options and create tools that allow practitioners to communicate effectively and stay updated on the latest research.
Founded: 2017
Focus: Credit Union Services
What they do: Founded by Kristopher Kovacs, Constellation Digital Partners offers a cloud-based suite of digital financial services specifically for credit unions. The company enables credit unions to offer new services and enhanced mobile experiences to members and allows fintech developers to bring their technologies and services directly to the credit union marketplace. Constellation Digital Partners aims to upend the barriers that block credit unions from accessing the latest technologies.
Founded: 2017
Focus: Enterprise Software Solutions
What they do: Elevar Technologies develops enterprise-level, web-based software solutions that facilitate the delivery of management processes and systems in an integrated environment. Their EventOps software enables event managers to organize their events efficiently, realize a higher ROI and allow their facilities and event teams to work together seamlessly.
Founded: 2011
Focus: Process Intelligence
What they do: Celonis develops process mining solutions that analyze an organization’s internal structure and workflows to identify strategic opportunities to improve performance. The company’s technology has applications for customers across industries ranging from banking to life sciences, helping them gain comprehensive visibility and drive valuable business changes.
Founded: 2015
Focus: Collectibles E-commerce
What they do: Launched by Mike Rosenberg, Hip eCommerce manages and develops online marketplaces that help people around the world buy and sell collectibles like stamps, postcards and comic books. The company’s custom-built search engine understands county and catalog number searches, providing collectors with accurate and relevant results to help them find exactly what they’re searching for. Hip eCommerce’s mission is to build collectible-specific communities where buyers and sellers can connect, share their passion and grow their hobby.
Founded: 2012
Focus: Healthtech
What they do: Biotech firm Click Therapeutics is pioneering a new kind of prescription medical treatment: digital tools for treating unmet medical needs that are designed to be used in conjunction with biomedical treatments. Projects in the pipeline include digital therapeutics to manage or support treatment of major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, substance use disorder and migraine.
Founded: 2016
Focus: Network Security
What they do: Established Jason Hollander and Paul Storm, Cymatic seeks to simplify the way organizations secure their online applications. The company helps highly regulated organizations prevent breaches and provides business leaders and auditors with proof of security hygiene by focusing on user behavior attributes. Cymatic is dedicated to providing real-time visibility into user and visitor behavior to detect risk, mitigate threats and enforce security hygiene.
Founded: 2017
Focus: Intelligent Business Solutions
What they do: Diveplane provides AI-powered business solutions, giving users full understanding and control over their automated business processes. Their technology enables businesses to intelligently automate repetitive tasks so analysts can spend more time on complex problems while allowing organizations to pinpoint and analyze potentially highly biased data and remove it from future analysis. Diveplane works with clients from a wide range of industries including finance, healthcare, supply chain management and commercial real estate.
Founded: 2012
Focus: Healthtech
What they do: Flatiron Health develops technology to advance cancer research and care. Its clinical research offerings, for example, can help with screening trial participants, developing a trial diversity plan and streamlining data transfers to improve study efficiency. The company has a Life Sciences Hub in the Raleigh-Durham area.
Founded: 2016
Focus: Coworking Software
What they do: Launched by DeShawn Brown and Tanner Hallman, Coworks develops software designed to help managers operate coworking spaces. The company’s software features a member directory, automated billing, room booking, member resources, front desk check-in, an event calendar and more. Coworks’ aim is to make coworking more accessible and efficient, empowering coworking space owners and operators to optimize their business and enhance the community experience.
Founded: 2017
Focus: Predictive Analytics
What they do: Allstacks has created a predictive analytics platform that aligns engineering, product and PMO teams. The platform aggregates data from product development-related sources to provide meaningful metrics that allow program and engineering management to report and forecast project progress, health and productivity. Allstacks’ aim is to unify teams’ tools and projects and identify root causes in real-time.
Founded: 2017
Focus: AI + Enterprise Augmented Intelligence
What they do: Pryon is an AI company that specializes in delivering augmented intelligence for the enterprise. The company’s platform is designed to connect customers and employees to digital transformation by extending their ability to find and use knowledge, drive workflows and make better decisions. Pryon’s aim is to significantly reduce complexity, costs and deployment times.
Founded: 2015
Focus: Business Intelligence Software
What they do: Malartu develops business intelligence software that helps teams, franchises and advisors organize their data in meaningful ways. Their software enables users to leverage workspaces, dashboards and shared connections to collaborate with every stakeholder using every data source in their business from one place. Malartu empowers its users to build relevant, insightful analytics across an entire organization, removing the need for coding or technical expertise.
Founded: 2016
Focus: Healthcare
What they do: Developer of the Galleri test, GRAIL is utilizing software and advanced technologies to enhance early cancer detection. The company’s Raleigh site, located near Research Triangle Park, features laboratory and warehouse space aimed at expanding the diagnostic capabilities of its liquid biopsy-based early-stage oncology test.
Founded: 2016
Focus: Performance Management
What they do: Liine provides a performance management platform that serves as an all-in-one solution for monitoring, optimizing and incentivizing how new patient calls are handled in clinics and medical centers. Through their platform, new patient enquiries are automatically recorded and analyzed to provide phone metrics and KPIs, while an automated incentive enables practices to reward front desk staff for booking new patient consultations. Liine also offers users a scorecard, which provides a curated list of the week’s top most noteworthy new patient calls.
Founded: 2017
Focus: Asthma Management
What they do: VitalFlo seeks to redefine the standard of care for asthma management by delivering actionable recommendations to patients. Their technology remotely monitors patient lung function and the air quality around them to identify potential asthma attack triggers, offering daily symptom surveys to keep track of any small changes. VitalFlo’s mission is to keep asthmatic patients out of the ER by preventing severe asthma attacks before they take place.
