20 Top YC Startups to Follow

Every year, new startups pull to the forefront of their industry through exciting innovation and industry-disrupting business models. We’ve rounded up the best YC startups of 2024 that startup-lovers, investors, and aspiring entrepreneurs should follow. 

Disclaimer: With so many exciting startups launching and growing worldwide, we aren’t able to cover them all. Furthermore, the startups that are listed below are not officially ranked and are listed in no particular order.

• Location: San Francisco, California
• Industry: Ecommerce and Delivery
• Founders: Apoorva Mehta, Brandon Leonardo, Max Mullen
• Founded In: 2012
• Funding: $2.9 Million
• Investors Include: Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz

Although Instacart began in 2012, it quickly took off during the COVID-19 pandemic and reached new heights as more and more people began to realize the many benefits of ordering their groceries online for delivery. Instacart provides convenience for busy homeowners that want to get groceries and personal care items delivered to the comfort of their homes.

• Location: San Francisco, California 
• Industry: Travel and Hospitality
• Founders: Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, Nathan Blecharczyk, Pri Shumate
• Founded In: 2008
• Funding: $6.4 Billion
• Investors Include: Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, T. Rowe Price

Airbnb has truly revolutionized the hospitality industry, providing affordable accommodations to people without the need for an expensive hotel. Whether someone is looking for a private room, apartment, or even an entire mansion all to themselves, Airbnb provides flexible accommodation options to help people stay comfortable during their stay. This is also a lucrative business for real estate entrepreneurs looking to maximize profits from their property.

• Location: San Francisco, California
• Industry: Online Banking
• Founders: Brian Armstrong, Fred Ehrsam
• Founded In: 2012
• Funding: $498.7 Million
• Investors Include: Initialized Capital, Union Square Ventures, True Capital Management

Monetary freedom is the name of the game for Coinbase. Coinbase is an online banking app that allows people to trade and use cryptocurrency freely without any strings attached. On Coinbase, users can also store their earnings through the online wallet, as well as earn rewards for their crypto trading.

• Location: San Francisco, California
• Industry: Logistics and Shipping
• Founders: Ryan Petersen, Susanne Schöneberg
• Founded In: 2013
• Funding: $2.4 Billion
• Investors Include: Founders Fund, DST Global, First Round Capital

Flexport is a YC startup that utilizes the power of algorithms and data to get companies the best shipping prices for their freights and cargo. Flexport allows companies to not only find the best prices but streamline the shipping and delivery process through a single, easy-to-use platform. Flexport also offers companies tracking of all their cargo and has scalable software so companies of any size can ship their cargo with confidence.

• Location: Bangalore, Karnataka, India
• Industry: Fashion and Ecommerce 
• Founders: Sanjeev Barnwal, Vidit Aatrey
• Founded In: 2015
• Funding: $1.1 Billion
• Investors Include: Meta, Shunwei Capital

Meesho is a unique platform where users can find a wide range of clothing, personal care goods, and other items to help improve their style. However, what sets Meesho apart is the fact that you can also start your business without any prior investments. There’s little risk involved, and this online platform is similar to other sites like Etsy. The major difference is that there’s little risk involved, and Meesho focuses on highlighting women’s ethnic clothing and fashion styles as well!

• Location: San Francisco, California
• Industry: Human Resources, Online Payroll
• Founders: Edward Kim, Joshua Reeves, Tomer London
• Founded In: 2011
• Funding: $746.1 Million
• Investors Include: General Catalyst, Capital IG, Kleiner Perkins

Starting a company and running a business is hard enough without having to worry about payroll, hiring, human resources, and all the other day-to-day functions of these paperwork-type tasks. For business owners that want to streamline their hiring and payroll, Gusto can help provide a wide range of human resources tasks to help companies concentrate on expanding and running their business rather than these HR functions. They even provide benefits and can scale to meet many different business needs.

• Location: Bogotá, Colombia
• Industry: Delivery Service
• Founders: Felipe Villamarin, Sebastian Mejia, Simon Borrero
• Founded In: 2015
• Funding: $2.3 Billion
• Investors Include: Sequoia, DST, Andreessen Horowitz 

Headquartered in Columbia, Rappi is now present in over nine countries and can help provide on-demand delivery services for food, personal care items, and much more. Rappi takes the name from the Spanish word “Rapido,” meaning fast, and has a reputation for being one of the fastest growing delivery systems that apply a little bit of everything. From food to clothing, this is a great delivery service for Spanish-speaking countries but might expand sooner rather than later.

• Location: Lehi, Utah
• Industry: Communications and Messaging
• Founders: Dennis Steele, Eric Rea
• Founded In: 2014
• Funding: $419.1 Million
• Investors Include: Accel, Summit Partners, GV (formerly Google Ventures)

Podium is one of the best YC startups to come about for local and small businesses. Podium provides communication messaging systems so that local business owners can reach out to their customers for everything from orders to requests for payments and even customer reviews. This text messaging system is secure and provides a way for businesses to interact with customers on a more personal yet professional level.

• Location: San Francisco, California
• Industry: Enterprise Software, Human Resources 
• Founders: Daniel Yanisse, Jonathan Perichon
• Founded In: 2014
• Funding: $679 Million
• Investors Include: Accel Partners, Google Ventures

In this day and age, it’s important to use a company that is competent enough to hire workers that will not pose a risk and have good, vouched for background checks. Checkr understands this and works to provide background screenings for a number of bigger companies including Uber. Checkr also sets itself apart by providing fair chance work, meaning that it will provide formerly incarcerated people or people with less than stellar backgrounds with the tools they need to find solid work and employment.

• Location: San Francisco, California 
• Industry: Wholesale
• Founders: Daniele Perito, Jeffrey Kolovson, Lauren Cooks Levitan, Marcelo Cortes, Max Rhodes
• Founded In: 2017
• Funding: $1.7 Billion
• Investors Include: Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Forerunner Ventures

Have you ever wondered where businesses cultivate and curate all of their fantastic local goods? Faire is one of the newest companies that provides a solution for wholesale, allowing people to get access to some of the best and most unique products to outfit their store and sell what they love. Faire combines unique products with the best marketplaces, helping entrepreneurs create a store that encompasses their brand and values.

Feeling inspired? Learn how to launch your own company with our guide on how to start a startup.

• Location: San Francisco, California
• Industry: Product Management, Analytics 
• Founders: Curtis Liu, Jeffrey Wang, Spenser Skates
• Founded In: 2012 
• Funding: $311.5 Million
• Investors Include: Battery Ventures, Quest Venture Partners, IVP

It can be difficult to fully embrace digital products in an ecommerce world that seems to value traditional, tangible products. However, digital products are now becoming more and more important to modern technology, and Amplitude is there to help provide customers with ways to improve their digital products and services. They are a leader in product analytics to help companies expand and improve their customer base.

• Location: Englewood, Colorado
• Industry: Aerospace
• Founders: Blake Scholl, Joe Wilding, Joshua Krall
• Founded In: 2014
• Funding: $245.7 Million
• Investors Include: Caffeinated Capital, SV Angel, Pi Campus

Boom is changing aerospace technology forever, envisioning flights that can be taken at supersonic speeds for the everyday passenger. They are based in Colorado but are currently working with the best minds in engineering and aerospace to help develop and implement a flight design that will propel travel to new heights (literally).

• Location: San Francisco, California
• Industry: Analytics
• Founders: Suhail Doshi, Tim Trefren
• Founded In: 2009
• Funding: $277 Million
• Investors Include: Bain Capital Tech Opportunities, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital

Product analytics is one of the most important parts of creating a business model and is essential in developing products that people will love and return to time and time again. Mixpanel provides real-time feedback for companies that are in need of new product analytics that will improve revenues and retain more customers. Mixpanel can help companies understand how their products are having an impact and how to better improve their product or services for continued use and expansion.

• Location: San Francisco, California
• Industry: Sports, News
• Founders: Adam Hansmann, Alex Mather
• Founded In: 2015
• Funding: $139.5 Million
• Investors Include: Bedrock Capital Partners, Founders Fund, Courtside Ventures

The Athletic is one of the newest sports news companies to emerge, having been established in 2016. The Athletic provides high-quality sports news writing directly to consumers and also has a wealth of other materials such as podcasts to help people get the latest information on all their favorite sports teams.

• Location: San Francisco, California
• Industry: Ebooks, File Sharing
• Founders: Jared Friedman, John R. Adler, Tikhon Bernstam
• Founded In: 2007
• Funding: $105.8 Million
• Investors Include: Spectrum Equity, Khosla Ventures, SVB Capital 

Scribd is the world’s largest online library and makes it easy for people to gain access to all of their favorite bestsellers, magazines, and newspapers. With a cheap price of only $9 per month, Scribd’s business model emphasizes affordability and accessibility of literary materials for all.

• Location: San Francisco, California 
• Industry: CMS, Web Design
• Founders: Bryant Chou, Sergie Magdalin, Vlad Magdalin
• Founded In: 2013
• Funding: $334.9 Million
• Investors Include: Silversmith Capital Partners, Accel, Rainfall Ventures

Webflow is changing the way entrepreneurs and marketers design their websites. With Webflow, marketing is easy, and creating a website is as simple as dragging and dropping different content pieces, pictures, or other design modules into your website. It has an easy-to-use interface and is used by over 3 million designers to date.

• Location: Silicon Valley (Sunnyvale, California)
• Industry: Video Games
• Founders: Dave Gausebeck, Matt Bell, Mike Beebe
• Founded In: 2011
• Funding: $409 Million
• Investors Include: Lux Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Felicis Ventures

Matterport is paving the way for 3D and VR creators. They provide a cloud space to share creations while also providing cameras, which are all used to help you manage your 3D models. This is essential software for developers making their own VR games.

• Location: San Francisco, California
• Industry: Ecommerce, Blogging Platform
• Founders: Chris Fanini, Dan Veltri, David Rusenko
• Founded In: 2007
• Funding: $35.7 Million
• Investors Include: Sequoia Capital, Tencent, Baseline Ventures

Weebly is another website builder that is made for creators. It allows creators to make a website to showcase their designs, make their names known, and scale as needed for customers. 

• Location: London, United Kingdom
• Industry: Developer APIs, Tourism
• Founders: Steve Domin, Tom Bates, Vincent Pastor
• Founded In: 2017
• Funding: $56.2 Million
• Investors Include: Blossom Capital, Index Ventures, Kima Ventures

Duffel is a unique business to help start a business! Duffel is made for developers and is designed to help streamline traveling from itinerary to checkout. You can create your own traveling business with documentation and testing to help improve your customer experience.

• Location: San Francisco, California
• Industry: Enterprise Applications
• Founders: Eric Koslow, Jack Altman
• Founded In: 2015
• Funding: $328.5 Million
• Investors Include: Thrive Capital, Khosla Ventures, Fuel Capital

Lattice is a software platform dedicated to helping businesses thrive and improve their employee engagement. Their many products are aimed toward improving employee performance, improving goal management, growth plans, and career paths for individual employees. 

Recommended: Check out our full list of the top startups to watch!