We’ve all seen the headlines. Inflation has lingered. Interest rates hit decade highs. Venture funding for startups has fallen.
Those economic dynamics had me worried as I turned my attention to St. Louis Inno’s 2024 Startups to Watch program. Would economic circumstances keep entrepreneurs and their innovative ideas on the sidelines? Would there be enough promising companies to source from for our 2024 Startups to Watch list?
I’m glad to report the answer to those questions is a resounding “no.” Our 2024 Startups to Watch roster, with 11 companies, is our largest yet and provides proof entrepreneurs haven’t shied away from turning innovative ideas into promising startups.
Tim Ridgway offers a powerful example. The owner of an 18-year-old Welsh Terrier, Ridgway over the years has grown frustrated with the process of providing his dog’s vaccination records for pet services.
“It was a big enough problem for me as an individual pet owner to start exploring what solutions might exist to make it easier to share routine information about my pet without me having to download an app and be the custodian of that data,” Ridgway said.
What started out as a personal project has turned into VetVerifi, a St. Louis-based startup that has developed software to help pet services providers and veterinarian clinics more easily share medical records between each other.
VetVerifi is just one example of how the companies on our 2024 Startups to Watch list are brining innovative products to market, with goals of filling unmet needs. In choosing the companies featured in our 2024 Startups to Watch list, we focused on earlier stage companies, most of which were founded within roughly the past five years and have raised smaller amounts of investment. We compiled our list based on our own reporting and recommendations from within the St. Louis startup community. The final selections were chosen by the St. Louis Inno and St. Louis Business Journal editorial team.
As part of our 2024 Startups to Watch feature, we’ve written profiles on each of the companies honored. We’ve also included a roundup of milestones achieved by the companies that were on our Startups to Watch list in 2023, all of which you can read at the links below.
