Welcome to L.A. Inno's inaugural Startups to Watch list, a collection of early-stage startups poised for growth in the years to come.
We're highlighting startups that have shown early signs of impact and those with the potential to do so.
This year's list features startups across a broad variety of industries — from manufacturing robotic arms to shows about crypto, and everything in between.
Like L.A.'s broader business environment, the city's startup scene isn't dominated by one industry or vertical. On our list you'll find consumer companies, B2B software providers, health care platforms and more.
To help us compile this year’s list, we reached out to L.A. and OC venture capitalists, founders and accelerator leaders, along with information from our reporting since L.A. Inno launched.
Dive into our 14 Startups to Watch in 2023 below.
1. Boulevard
Boulevard's software platform has expanded beyond scheduling appointments and processing payments, to include everything a self-care business needs to run, like marketing and financial reporting.
The company closed on a $70 million Series C round in 2022, led by Point72 Private Investments. That brings its total fundraising to $110 million since launching in 2016.
The startup recently ranked No. 54 on Deloitte Tech’s Fast 500 and experienced a 3200% growth rate from 2018-2021.
The co-founders are Matt Danna, who serves as CEO, and Sean Stavropoulos.
2. Archytas
Archytas, headquartered in Irvine, creates robotic arms. They are manufactured and assembled in micro-factories that can pop up anywhere, providing employment in underserved areas. Archytas is looking at Santa Ana for its next micro-factory.
“We want to bring the future of capitalism to the fore, by creating STEM opportunities with upward mobility to these types of communities,” co-founder Karen Caswelch told LA Inno. “As an African-American woman, I've seen the impact of job loss in both urban and rural communities and want to be a part of making a difference.”
The company has an education component also. It’s developing robotic training labs at community colleges to train the next generation of automation technicians.
Caswelch serves as COO. The other co-founder, Ryan Polk, serves as CEO. They’ve self-funded Archytas Automation so far. Over the past two years since launching, they’ve committed $2.3 million as part of a pre-seed round.
3. Hello Labs
On the heels of the recent crash-and-burn of FTX and its sister company, hedge fund Alameda Research — along with criminal indictments for several key team members — Hello Labs plans to launch a TV show about the entire crypto industry. The goal of the show, Killer Whales, is to entertain and educate.
“Several crypto investors got caught up in the FOMO and didn’t do their own research before investing, often just investing blindly based on a cool logo, or flashy website,” Paul Caslin, Hello Labs founder, told LA Inno. “Killer Whales breaks this mold by not only having industry experts critiquing the projects, but also a focus on the underlying numbers and project foundations.”
Hello Labs was founded last year. Caslin is a multi-award-winning director and producer, and was the creative director for the MTV VMA awards.
Hello Labs is also producing and distributing games and NFTs. Its token was built on the BNB chain, launched by crypto exchange Binance.
4. GoFreight
GoFreight develops cloud-based software that consolidates the work of freight forwarders into a single platform. A freight forwarder organizes shipments for companies to get goods from a manufacturer to their final destination.
The startup provides freight forwarders tools to get bids and helps them automate their workflow by eliminating a lot of manual data entry. Freight forwarders can track shipments in real time, with integrated payment processing and accounting.
“Customer service will be key in the freight market in 2023, and this will help freight forwarders improve their margins,” founder and CEO Trenton Chen told L.A. Inno.
The company recently raised $23 million in Series A funding, co-led by Flex Capital and Headline. Its total funding to date is $28.1 million.
GoFreight saw nearly 200% growth from 2020 to 2021, Chen said.
5. Slingshot Aerospace
Slingshot Aerospace makes software to track objects in space and help those objects avoid collisions in orbit. Founded in 2017 by U.S. Air Force veterans Melanie Stricklan and Thomas Ashman, along with entrepreneur David Godwin, it was incubated by Techstars L.A. It's co-headquartered in El Segundo and in Austin.
Slingshot recently raised more than $40 million in a series A2 round. The company also recently secured a loan, the amount of which they declined to disclose, from Horizon Technology Finance. Slingshot recently acquired Numerica’s Space Domain Awareness division and launch-and-satellite-analytics company Seradata.
In early January, the company announced that long-time technology product leader Thomas Arend came on board as chief product officer. His experience creating product strategies includes leadership positions with Google, Facebook and Twitter. He also co-founded Savvy, an online skill-sharing platform, which was acquired in 2018.
Slingshot's total funding to date is more than $82 million, a company spokesperson told L.A. Inno.
6. Veloce Energy
Veloce Energy created technology that it says can reduce the time and cost of grid connections for electric vehicle charging and building electrification.
Its FastGrid system uses existing grids. The company says its system yields less engineering costs and uses “simple” construction methods. It provides modular energy storage and modular above-ground installation systems. Its software platform integrates site operations and “secure” transactions under a single glass interface.
It has raised $6.5 million to date and is currently raising a $10 million Series A round. Its investors include Ecliptic Capital, Elevation Ventures and multiple smaller angels, Wolfe said.
Since launch, it’s been accepted into multiple accelerators, including the L.A. Cleantech Incubator, the city of L.A.’s incubator that assists in the commercialization of clean tech and job creation in the Los Angeles region.
7. Bump
Bump, an AI-powered fintech startup for creators, was founded in 2021 and participated in the Long Beach Accelerator that year.
Earlier this year, co-founder and CEO James Jones Jr. was invited to be a member of the Forbes Business Council. In December, Bump was awarded a grant from Founders First CDC, a national non-profit that empowers diverse founder-led businesses. Bump was one of 30 companies in L.A. to receive a Job Creators Quest Grant.
In November, the company announced a partnership with Mastercard and launched the Bump Creator Card through the Mastercard network.
Last July, the company launched an “income-discovery” tool, which helps creators track revenue from multiple sources, monitor expenses, access credit and manage their crypto and NFTs.
In total, it’s raised $2.5 million from investors including Sixty8 Capital and Connetic Ventures.
8. PictorLabs
This digital pathology startup is developing an AI-powered platform for the study of changes in tissues caused by disease.
PictorLabs recently announced its launch, with the closing of a $15.2 million financing round. M Ventures, SCC Soft Computer and Koç Holding led the round. Since its founding in 2019, PictorLabs has raised more than $18 million to commercialize what’s known as virtual staining.
The company’s technology uses deep learning algorithms. The company says it eliminates the need for chemical staining, reducing the time to get results, while also enabling repeated testing, without the need for multiple tissue samples.
The startup's co-founders are Aydogan Ozcan, a UCLA Chancellor’s Professor, and Yair Rivenson.
9. Bionaut Labs
This biotech company uses precision micro-technology with the help of microscale robots. The goal is to eliminate the traditional barriers of delivering treatments inside the body.
Late last year, Bionaut Labs closed over $43 million in a Series B round, led by Khosla Ventures. That brings its total financing to date to more than $63 million.
Many diseases of the brain and central nervous system can be challenging to treat, according to the company, because of the difficulty of delivering treatments beyond the blood-brain barrier to reach deep locations in the midbrain with precision.
Bionaut uses magnetic propulsion to deliver drugs locally. It claims that this is an efficient way to do this, avoiding side effects and toxicity from systemically-delivered drugs.
Bionaut Labs was co-founded by two robotics entrepreneurs, Michael Shpigelmacher, who serves as CEO, and Aviad Maizels.
10. Apsy
Apsy, launched in 2021, developed an app builder powered by AI. The AI enables anyone that wants to create an app to simply describe what they want and Apsy will build it. No knowledge of code is necessary. Look for this development studio to introduce its metaverse experience in Q1, where users can build their apps using a VR studio.
Apsy attended the Viterbi Startup Garage incubator. Since launching, Apsy has grown to 50 customers worldwide, CEO Tooraj Helmi told L.A. Inno.
It’s raised $675,000 in total, all from a pre-seed round. The lead investor was Ramesh Dontha, an angel investor and the managing partner of Digital Transformation Pro.
11. PrivacyHawk
The goal of this startup, which creates a privacy protection app, is to prevent fraud instead of reacting to it.
Since launching last year, PrivacyHawk has obtained more than 50,000 users and 3,000 paying customers, CEO Aaron Mendes told L.A. Inno.
Its conversion rate is four times the industry average for subscription apps, Mendes said.
To date, it’s raised $1.1 million via a pre-seed round led by FFVC and Nufund (formerly Tech Coast Angels San Diego).
Mendes said PrivacyHawk works in a way that addresses the root of the issue — by reducing users’ digital footprints. The service scans the web for personal data exposures and syncs with email inboxes to identify all the corporate databases someone’s data could be in. Then it removes data automatically “from anywhere that it doesn't need to be,” he said.
Customers pay $75 per year to get unlimited fraud vulnerability removals and monthly monitoring and protection. Free users can scan and see where their personal information is exposed, which could put them at risk.
12. Talamus Health
Talamus Health created a platform for digitizing the health care chain — including clinics, hospitals and labs — in emerging markets, along with an app.
It’s currently being used in three countries — Ghana, Nigeria and Zimbabwe — at approximately 430 healthcare locations, CEO and neurosurgeon Muri Raifu, told L.A. Inno.
Talamus Health has raised $1.6 million to date from a friends-and-family round, along with investments from Expert Dojo, an L.A. accelerator and pre-seed venture fund, and Suncoast Ventures.
In real-time, Talamus links patients to an integrated health care chain, and simultaneously connects health service providers to a broader digital marketplace.
“Rising internet penetration, mobile device usage, increased access to broadband services, a relatively young population and the decreasing cost of digital inclusion provide a great enabling environment for Talamus to drive change in healthcare delivery in Africa,” Raifu said.
13. Single Pass
This startup has created a patented electrocautery device that the company says improves the safety of certain types of biopsy procedures by preventing any bleeding that can be caused by biopsy tools.
Single Pass says its R&D is completed and it has the final configuration of the device it will bring to market, CEO Bill Colone said.
The company has raised a total of $3 million from a seed round and a Series A round. It plans to open another round by the end of Q1 to fund its commercial launch.
14. Champions Round
This startup created a gaming and media app for Gen-Z. It just closed a Series A round of $7 million.
Champions Round makes short-form, hyper-casual fantasy sports games. It builds hubs for six or more friends to play games together, over and over, at any point throughout the year. Typically, this has only been offered as an annual experience, co-founder and CEO Carter Russ said.
The company, launched in 2018, also distributes content across its various social media channels, podcasts and YouTube.
Competition includes Underdog Fantasy, Sleeper.App and Prize Picks.
“Our secret sauce is defined around group play,” Russ told L.A. Inno.
