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New York and Silicon Valley are known as popular startup hubs, but there are other US cities that have become home to cool and successful tech companies too.
We've compiled a list of 25 of the hottest startups in cities across the US, with a focus on companies growing in flyover states. To do so, we spoke with investors and members on the tech scene.
Though our list includes some big names, it also features fledgling startups, some of which you may not have heard of yet.
Bumble is a dating app that prompts girls make the first move.
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What it is:Bumble is an app that flips traditional dating upside down by letting women make the first move. (Whitney Wolfe, a Tinder cofounder, created Bumble not long after she left that company.)
Bumble, like Tinder, uses profile swiping to match singles in the same town. But on Bumble women make the first move, and men who receive a match have 24 hours to respond before the match disappears. When same-sex couples get matched on the app, either party can make the first move.
Bumble launched eight months ago, and it's approaching 1 million downloads. The app has over 5 million conversations started by women, over 1 billion swipes, and 15% week-over-week growth.
Where it's from: Austin, Texas
Founders: Whitney Wolfe
Funding: none announced
Conspire wants to help you get introduced to anyone you want to meet.
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What it is: If you want to meet someone you don't know via LinkedIn, there's no good way to do it. So two data scientists who met at Stanford, Alex Devkar and Paul McReynolds, founded Conspire to help you get introduced to anyone you want to meet.
Conspire uses your email account as the basis for a game of Six Degrees of Separation. Sign up, and it analyzes your email. Then enter the name of the person you want to search and it finds someone in your contact list to introduce you, examining that person's social-media connections. It may even find multiple people to help introduce you. Then it will recommend the best choice.
Conspire uses a smart algorithm to figure things out like the multiple email addresses of the same person. The founders say it operates at 95% accuracy.
Where it's from: Boulder, Colorado
Founders: Paul McReynolds, Alex Devkar
Funding: $3.5 million from TechStars, Tahoma Ventures
Cotopaxi sells outerwear with a humanitarian twist.
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What it is:Cotopaxi is a humanitarian-minded e-commerce company that specializes in outerwear. Its products — like its popular lifestyle backpacks— are made in sweatshop-free environments.
When you buy a product from Cotopaxi, it has a specific cause attached to it. The company wants its customers to feel a connection with the causes they choose to support through their purchases.
"If you buy the Inca backpack, you’re giving one week of tutoring to a child in an orphanage in Bolivia," CEO Davis Smith explained to TechCrunch. "If you buy the Sambaya fleece, you’re giving one cancer treatment to a woman in Senegal. If you buy the Cambodia water bottle, you’re giving six months of clean water to someone in Cambodia."
Where it's from: Salt Lake City, Utah
Founders: CJ Whittaker, Stephan Jacob, Davis Smith
Funding: $9.5 million from Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Greycroft Partners, Brand Foundry Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, Jeff Kearl, Josh James, New Enterprise Associates, Peterson Ventures, Kickstart Seed Fund, SherpaCapital, Tekton Ventures
See the rest of the story at Business Insider