Colorado is building a stable of high-growth startups that promise to disrupt some of the world’s largest industries.
You likely know the names of the major local players from last year, but a new generation of startups is ready to break onto the scene in 2022.
In Colorado Inno’s fourth annual Startups to Watch list, we’re highlighting 22 startups that are poised to make headlines in 2022, from mammoth funding rounds, crucial acquisitions or new products that will shake up their respective fields.
To create this list, we sourced suggestions from industry experts, venture capital firms, accelerators and others, along with our own reporting. This list covers startups in a range of industries, with varying levels of funding, from across the state.
A look back at last year’s list will reveal that we were ahead of the game on new last-mile delivery unicorn Veho as it raised $125 million in December. We also featured Accept.inc before it raised $90 million in debt and equity capital in 2021 to scale its platform, double its team and expand to new markets. And we can’t forget about a big year for gender-affirming telemedicine program Plume, home-staging service Guest House and connected-fitness startup CLMBR.
From a startup changing the game on flower delivery to a robotics company developing autonomous lawnmowers, here are our 22 Colorado startups to watch in 2022:
The Denver-based startup, founded by Vanessa Otero, helps to track, rate and report on media bias to help brands, publishers, social media companies and citizens to control their exposure to fake news and biased media content. Its solutions, including its Media Bias Chart, are used by large companies across the world, including Twitter. At the end of 2021, Ad Fontes brought on nearly $1 million in funding from private investment syndicate Gaingels and nonprofit American Public Media Group.
Prior to winning Denver Startup Week’s Pitch competition in 2021, Orion Brown and Black Travel Box struggled to garner investor interest. Brown had built a line of travel-sized skin, lip and body care products for Black travelers, attracting national interest for its efforts. Black Travel Box has already grown its customer base into the thousands and worked with accelerator programs from Target and Macy’s, and is working with the latter to appear on its website and in stores. Brown is also expanding Black Travel Box’s product portfolio, working with a host of new manufacturers to grow its footprint.
Founded in 2020 by longtime Denver business leader Arezou Zarafshan, Call Emmy is an on-demand chore marketplace that connects busy families to local household service providers. Users first choose a service, including things like laundry or meal preparation, book instantly for now or later, and watch the project get completed by a vetted service provider. Named after Zarafshan’s longtime house manager Emmy, the startup wants to help busy families regain up to 10 hours a week spent doing chores.
As a member of the 2021 Techstars Workforce Development Accelerator, Chamba is helping Latinx job seekers residing in the U.S. find jobs through its tech. Founded by Diego Montemayor and David Ruiz, the company shares vacancies with its network of over 92,000 Lantinx job seekers and has created over 4,000 jobs so far. The company posts job opportunities in housework, education, personal care, mechanics, health and more. Chamba’s job marketplace also invites employers to post and hire within its app, connecting them with qualified job seekers in minutes.
Launched by serial founders Tim Luckow and Jovin Cronin-Wilesmith, Boulder-based Farm helps investors interested in climate solutions simplify the land diligence and use process. The company is building a community-powered tool for investing in undervalued land assets, betting that it can help restore unhealthy land to viable productivity and significantly reduce carbon emissions. Farm’s primary targets for investment are undervalued land, wind and solar generation projects, water and more.
Founded in 2019 by married co-founders Ty and Jesse Hiss, along with Kearby Tinsley, Fresh Sends is changing the way people give gifts and flowers. The company’s flower boxes have made waves on social media and the startup has partnered with major brands like Bumble. Fresh Sends’ bouquets retail for $60 and change weekly, ensuring customers receive the freshest and in-season florals. The company also offers next-day shipping across the U.S. and handwritten cards included with any bouquet purchase.
Much like Tesla did for vehicles, Helio is trying to usher in the next generation of all-electric homes. The Denver company, founded by Eric Reinhardt, Clay Dusel and Bill Lucas-Brown, takes into consideration your climate, unique home attributes, roof space, energy usage and existing appliance performance to suggest the most economic path to electrify your appliances and run your entire home off the sun. Once the plan is determined, Helio manages all aspects of the installation work to turn your home electric.
Denver-based Onward Delivery, founded in 2020 by Grafton Elliott, is a freight marketplace that connects retail stores to underutilized trucks on the road. The company has seen the need for its service grow as Covid-19 delays have caused backups at global ports and warehouses, and furniture delivery times have rapidly increased. Onward's platform matches available shipments to a truck already headed in the same direction. It creates a more efficient shipping model for retailers, full trucks for carriers and quicker deliveries for customers. The company recently announced an oversubscribed $4.7 million seed funding round, led by Colorado’s Range Ventures and Matchstick Ventures.
Secretive Denver popcorn startup Opopop emerged from stealth in 2021 with its microwave popcorn line called Flavor Wrapped Popcorn Kernels. Unlike traditional popcorn, Opopop individually wraps each kernel in flavor prior to popping. The company’s popcorn comes in a variety of flavors including Fancy Butter, Salted Umami and Vanilla Cake Pop. The startup is led by longtime local entrepreneurs Jonas Tempel and Bradley Roulier, the former founders of online dance music store Beatport before they sold it to SFX Entertainment for north of $50 million in 2012. The company announced a $5 million Series A funding round in June that was led by Valor Siren Ventures and brought the company's funding to $11.6 million.
Boulder-based Optera is on a mission to enable the corporate sector to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. The company has leveraged the sustainability research and consulting expertise of its predecessor firm, Point380, to launch a corporate climate and sustainability management platform. Led by co-founders Tim Weiss, Ty Colman and Jason Denner, Optera raised a seed capital round in April 2021 to expand its software-as-a-service capabilities. The startup has worked with companies and NGOs including the World Economic Forum and the Rocky Mountain Institute.
Founded during the Covid-19 pandemic, Boulder’s Otter Waiver is building digital waiver and participant management software designed specifically for the outdoor industry. Founded by Ben Nelson, the company worked with attorneys, guides, theme parks and activity providers to design its waiver for the outdoor industry that follows the ESIGN Act and Uniform Electronic Transactions Act. From amusement parks to outdoor gear rentals, Otter Waiver is allowing companies to build digital waivers, collect signatures and store data.
Denver-based Pomp originally launched in 2020 as a direct-to-consumer skin care platform that leveraged licensed estheticians to offer unique product recommendations. While it still offers that service, its new product from 2021, Pomp Professional, has become a difference-maker for the early-stage startup. Pomp Professional was launched to help working estheticians connect more with their customers. With the business-to-business platform, estheticians can consult virtually with their clients, complete orders and gain access to additional products. As evidence of its traction, founder Shannon Erley and Pomp announced an oversubscribed $1.5 million seed funding round in April.
Led by co-founder Jeff Carr, Mike Corbisiero and Alissa Pajer, Boulder-based Precog is building a solution that allows businesses to access live, ready-to-query data from any source with ease. The company can collect data from more than 10,000 sources, including Salesforce, Hubspot, Stripe and others, and delivers them in an analytics-ready form without the need for a team of data engineers. The company’s partners include Alteryx, Everflow and others.
More than two years after stepping away from the company he helped build, LogRhythm co-founder Chris Petersen is back leading a Boulder startup providing military-grade cybersecurity to small and medium-sized businesses. RADICL Defense recently emerged from stealth in November with a $3 million seed funding round that would help the company develop its first product in the cyber space. The company is creating a solution to protect the information systems of businesses and contractors that are involved in sensitive national defense work.
As it readies for submission of its potentially game-changing blood pressure monitoring application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Riva Health is aiming to raise major funding in 2022. Co-founder Dag Kittlaus, co-founder of Siri and Viv Labs, partnered with Tuhin Sinha to found the company and develop smartphone technology to check blood pressure and store, monitor and share that information. Riva Health’s product, a blood pressure monitor that uses the camera and flashlight on your smartphone, is being tested and validated at UCHealth's Anschutz Medical Campus. In a November interview, Kittlaus said the company would raise a “massive amount of capital” toward the end of 2022.
For nearly three years, Boulder’s Scythe Robotics stayed in stealth developing autonomous technology for the landscaping industry. Founded in 2018 by Jack Morrison, Isaac Roberts and Davis Foster, Scythe had been building a fully autonomous, electric lawnmower for commercial projects. In June, the company emerged from stealth with the momentum of a $13.8 million Series A funding round and its fourth-generation autonomous lawnmower. At the time of its announcement, Scythe had developed a 4-foot-long mower with a 52-inch mowing deck and a battery that lasts for eight hours of mowing time.
Boulder-based startup Speak_ is building a new pipeline of diverse software engineers ready to be hired at some of the world’s largest tech companies. The startup, formerly known as Wallbreakers and founded by Andrea Guendelman, has created a four-week online program for new or existing engineering talent and has already placed more than 500 candidates at companies like Amazon, Visa, Airbnb and Colorado-based Bonusly. The program combines courses, coding challenges, office hours, mock interviews and more to prepare diverse candidates for jobs in software engineering.
Founded by Mike and Craig Hering and Jay Maxwell, Boulder-based Suite Studios is making cloud-based workflows easy and accessible to all postproduction studios. The company’s technology enables production teams to collaborate on projects from across the globe, giving them access through the company’s cloud-based storage. The company’s software is compatible with Adobe, Davinci, Unreal Engine and more and promises lag-free editing.
Led by John Nellen and James Pellizzi, Denver-based Todyl is simplifying security for the distributed workforce. The startup has built a unified security cloud platform built for managed service providers and managed security service providers that is designed to bring devices, clouds and end-users into a single, secure network. The company says its platform increases margins, accelerates growth and streamlines operations.
Stealthy Denver startup UP is promising to help startups “super-charge their entrepreneur toolkit” with a range of founder-focused tools. The company brings together three core sites, a fundraising platform called Startup Networx, a discount site for businesses called Startup Rebates and a content hub called Startup Blogpost. The 12-person company, led by Hans Schaler, Michael Gallagher, Emily Ahrens and Abe Nadar, has amassed a waiting list of more than 32,000 as it prepares to emerge from stealth in January.
In November, Denver startup Wedfuly made its national debut as it landed a deal on ABC's "Shark Tank." The company launched in 2017 to offer virtual wedding planning services to engaged couples and quickly pivoted to hosting virtual weddings when the Covid-19 pandemic hit. Founder and CEO Caroline Creidenberg led Wedfuly to build out its software platform and found a swell of interest from couples. As of November, the company had worked with nearly 1,000 couples to share weddings with 200,000 guests from around the world.
Led by serial Denver founders Gregarious Narain and Petr Bela, Zealous helps online creators monetize and go live with their audience through a personalized streaming platform. The startup gives creators the tools to build a business around their community of fans, offering memberships, meet and greets and more.
