Software startups 2013

Lincoln Murphy, founder and managing director, Sixteen Ventures : While industry-wide trends like Big Data and mobile will continue to drive innovation and be interesting to investors, the players to watch are the new cloud-native startups in each market.

They should be seen as a threat to the status quo and should expose an opportunity that existing players in those spaces might have missed or overlooked.

These startups could indicate a change in market dynamics including an acceptance of cloud offerings that incumbents need to pay attention to. Andrew Hay, chief evangelist, CloudPassage : Anyone taking traditional enterprise software needs and re-exposing them as a metered, API-driven service is a software player to watch in Kevin Cox, vice president corporate marketing, Actian Corporation : Facebook will be the new hot software company to watch.

Their work in the user ID and security log on services is a real eye opener, and door opener. The integration with iOS is another stunner. Watch companies such as Mozilla and the Chrome platform to drive this agenda. Zach Nelson, CEO, NetSuite : NetSuite has a unique perspective on the technology landscape because so many high-profile software startups and young companies run our cloud business management software. For example, Square is transforming payments by enabling merchants to use smartphones and tablets to accept credit cards at physical points of sale.

Founders can apply here. The program comes amid growing efforts across the region to close the gap in access to capital, as women and founders of color raise significantly less in venture dollars than their white male counterparts. It also follows the cherry on top of a wild year for fundraising among D.

Please Sign In and use this article's on page print button to print this article. Our thoughts? Well, some of us loved it, but others were too repulsed by the idea to even try it. Already, prominent people like Bill Gates and Al Gore stand behind the company. Boxbee, a startup tackling the storage space, won the best new startup prize at the Launch Festival earlier this year.

Boxbee offers free boxes and free pickup for secure storage. It's basically cloud storage for your physical things. But it's currently only available in San Francisco. A team of two former Google product managers recently launched Canary, a new calendar app for iPhones. Canary employs natural language processing to let you quickly input the who, what, when, and where in a single text box. Let's say you wanted to put a lunch meeting in your calendar.

All you have to do is type, "Lunch with Alyson at p. Canary also helps you schedule meetings without having to get involved in a lengthy, back-and-forth email exchange. With Canary, you can suggest multiple times to meet and then send an invitation to guests. Hatch, formerly known as Makeably, aims to help makers utilize their underlying skill set to further expand their product offerings and range, and take the risk part of it out.

At the same time, it's enabling everyday people to purchase one-of-a-kind items. Potential buyers browse through site's various sections — home, apparel, kids, hobby, and weddings. Once you see something you like, you can request to get a custom version made. Let's say you see a pair of leggings, for example. You could upload photos and designs, select your size, and the type of fabric you prefer and get those custom made.

You could also get a custom-made vintage TV that you can plug your laptop into and watch videos in black and white. Soylent, the food replacement product, recently finalized its product and has begun large-scale manufacturing. As we've previously described it , think of it as the healthiest milkshake in the world. If you order it now, you'll receive Soylent in early Every month, the Assembly community picks an amazing idea for an app.

It's kind of like a VC firm, but the capital is used to accelerate app growth. Assembly lets in anyone with a good idea for a mobile app or Web app. Enterprise customers are very demanding and they are very direct with feedback.

If they don't like the software, they don't buy it. The customer adoption and sales pipeline is easily understood and tracked. First you generate leads, then you have your leads evaluate and try out the software, and if the software solves a real problem, they pay for the software. And you take the money and ask what else you can sell to them! I think they hype cycle for enterprise software is already underway.

Startups like Dropbox and Atlassian have now grown into sizable software companies with valuations backed by real revenue that justifies the valuation. There are some emerging stars as well - Git Hub, the online Git repository targeted towards developers is growing fast, both in terms of revenue and customers. Closer home, startups like Druva and Fusion Charts have worked really hard over the last several years to build up a solid revenue and customer base.

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