16 Top Boulder Startups to Watch in 2023

Every year, new startups pull to the forefront of their industry through exciting innovation, tech, and industry-disrupting business models. We’ve rounded up the best Boulder startups of 2023 that startup lovers, investors, and aspiring entrepreneurs should follow. 

Disclaimer: With so many exciting startups launching and growing, 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.

• Industry: Life Science
• Founders: Andrew Garst, Ryan T. Gill, Tanya Warnecke
• Founded In: 2015 
• Funding: Venture - Series Unknown, $463.9 Million
• Investors Include: JS Capital Management, D1 Capital Partners

Inscripta is focused on life science and developing a digital genome engineering solution. The platform provides automated CRISPR engineering for rapid strain improvement. it is designed to simplify, accelerate, and ensure that all medical providers achieve robust strain optimization. There is no bioinformatic expertise needed, and all laboratory aspects of CRISPR editing are automated. All strain engineering time spent can be potentially cut in half compared to traditional methods.

• Industry: IT
• Founders: Jay Prassl, Mark Manes
• Founded In: 2015
• Funding: Series C, $152.6 Million
• Investors Include: Insight Partners, Koch Disruptive Technologies

Automox is helping businesses consolidate their IT operations into a single console by providing a cloud-native endpoint management platform. Companies will no longer have to use clunky legacy tools and can eliminate risk while also automating their configuration, patching, and compliance with Windows, macOS, and Linex systems. Businesses will be able to manage and update all their devices from anywhere in the world.

• Industry: Ecommerce
• Founders: Frederick Cook, Itamar Zur, Lukas Keindl, Matt Graham
• Founded In: 2016
• Funding: Series B, $299.2 Million
• Investors Include: General Catalyst, Tiger Global Management

Veho is helping ecommerce brands by providing an end-to-end parcel delivery service. The help will increase the customer lifetime value of a company and add to a better overall customer experience. Veho has a proven record of 99.9% on-time delivery and increases customer purchasing rates by up to 19.2%. The delivery service can be personalized, fast, and transparent for next-day deliveries and returns.

• Industry: Integrations
• Founders: Zack Kanter
• Founded In: 2017
• Funding: Series B, $75 Million
• Investors Include: Union Square Ventures, Susa Ventures

Businesses across the globe will benefit from Stedi, a platform that develops APIs for building EDI integrations. Developers will be able to solve EDI problems at scale, and the service is 100% self-serve with 100% usage-based pricing. There is also a free-tier option included for development and testing. Customers will use the platform to receive EDI files over SFTP, store them in Bucket, and leverage FUnctions.

• Industry: Analytics
• Founders: Noah Horton, Tyler Willis
• Founded In: 2017
• Funding: Series B, $53.5 Million
• Investors Include: SignalFire, NextGen Venture Partners

Companies will no longer need to manage their own analytics thanks to the automated analytics platform Unsupervised. The company can find hidden insights within complex data to help efficiency and decision-making for businesses. Using AI, Unsupervised can tell companies why conversions are up, down, or flat in just a few clicks.

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

• Industry: Real Estate
• Founders: Chad Lewkowski, Christin Price, Luke Johnson, Ryan Brennan, Steve Herschleb
• Founded In: 2015
• Funding: Series B, $50.4 Million
• Investors Include: Forecast Labs, Left Lane Capital

Neat Capital is taking advantage of the competitive housing market by allowing clients to purchase their homes using 100% cash offers while also closing with financing within 10-15 days. Using their platform, even complex home loans are able to get approved up to 3x faster than the industry average. There is a suite of tools available for homeowners including real-time visibility, $50,000 backed financial security, and quick approvals.

See more of the top real estate startups.

• Industry: Publishing
• Founders: Stan James
• Founded In: 2013
• Funding: Series C, $121.5 Million
• Investors Include: Lexington Partners, Progress Ventures

Publishers have had a hard time in recent years due to the decline in advertising revenues. Sovrn is here to help by providing a publishing technology platform that helps publishers operate and grow their businesses. Clients will have access to a number of tools including an ad exchange, ad management, commerce, and signal, which helps turn engagement into revenue. The platform also includes a wealth of consumer insights and enriched audience data.

• Industry: PayFac
• Founders: Caleb Avery
• Founded In: 2019
• Funding: Series A, $24.2 Million
• Investors Include: Abstract Ventures, Peterson Ventures

Using Tilled, software companies are able to enjoy all the benefits of becoming a PayFac but without the high upfront investment and ongoing overhead. This allows companies to take a share of their revenue instead of giving it away to larger platforms. The additional payments that flow through a company's systems will help increase margins, improve valuation, and create additional revenue streams.

• Industry: Chat Tech
• Founders: Thierry Schellenbach, Tommaso Barbugli
• Founded In: 2014
• Funding: Series B, $58.1 Million
• Investors Include: GGV Capital, Knight Capital

Instead of companies investing large amounts of resources to build their own in-house chat and feed for applications, Stream is providing access at a fraction of the time and cost. The chat messaging and activity feeds integrate into a number of existing applications and should help accelerate a launch. They also help companies focus on the development of the app instead of creating new features.

• Industry: SMS Messaging
• Founders: Andrew Kimmell, Mike Hickman, Ted Guggenheim
• Founded In: 2012
• Funding: Series C, $32.3 Million
• Investors Include: Eastside Partners, Access Venture Partners

TextUs is a platform that is specifically for businesses that need text messaging to engage in real-time conversation with customers, leads, employees, and candidates. Responses could increase 10x with text messaging, giving businesses a more viable form of communication compared to other traditional methods. The platform is easy to use and designed to resemble a regular SMS inbox.

Looking to discover more startups in Colorado? Check out our list of the top Denver startups to watch.

• Industry: Sports
• Founders: Bryan Birsic, Dave Riess, Sam Beaudin
• Founded In: 2014
• Funding: $58.6 Million
• Investors Include: Ares Management, Cyrus Capital Partners

Recreational sports leagues often don't have the manpower or resources to become efficient and organized. TeamSnap is giving these leagues a chance to take the work out of their play. The platform includes everything that an organization would need to run their sports clubs including registration, invoicing, rostering, and scheduling. Everything can be managed with an app, and it allows people to collect self-assessments and administer duties all from one location.

• Industry: Product Development
• Founders: William Burke, Carson Darling
• Founded In: 2020
• Funding: Pre-Seed, $1.2 Million
• Investors Include: Koa Labs, Fenton Founders Fund

Five Flute is integrated directly into the 3D design tools that product development teams love to use. The platform enables users to discover, resolve, and communicate any engineering issues that arrive without ever leaving their favorite applications. Issue tracking and design collaboration and all made possible through the use of Five Flute. All issues and comments are linked to the parts and assemblies they impact so teams never have to lose their design history.

• Industry: Education
• Founders: Al Aghili, Charlie Sander
• Founded In: 2013
• Funding: Debt Financing, $8.4 Million
• Investors Include: N/A

Even though the cloud has brought numerous opportunities for educational institutions, they still put these organizations at risk of online attacks. ManagedMethods provides a proactive cybersecurity platform made specifically for K-12 grade schools. Using the platform, schools can make securing data and detecting student safety signals easy and affordable. Clients are able to integrate with Google, Microsoft 365, and Zoom.

• Industry: Engineering Tech
• Founders: Will Srubar
• Founded In: 2021
• Funding: N/A
• Investors Include: SOSV, IndieBio

MojoTech is building cloud-native software engineering solutions that require speed, scale, complexity, security, and innovation. The company works with a variety of other businesses to produce the tech they are lacking. They have built infrastructure for transportation, decoupled front-end applications, and more.

• Industry: Sports
• Founders: Jack Wareham, Peter Liu, Simon Knapp
• Founded In: 2014
• Funding: N/A
• Investors Include: Boomtown Accelerators

Fanatics is a sports brand that has partnered with all the major sports throughout the world. They offer high-quality clothes and other products associated with the NFL, MLB, NBA, WWE, and more. Fans can buy their sports gear through the site and receive multiple discounts and offers.

• Industry: Chat Tech
• Founders: Julian Denaes
• Founded In: 2013
• Funding: N/A
• Investors Include: Nebraska Angel Network

SnapEngage develops chatbot technology that improves customer engagement for businesses. The platform offers a few features that are unique to SnapEngage. First, it has the ability to transfer chats to other agents if the original agent is unavailable. Second, it gives businesses the ability to track customer satisfaction through Net Promoter Score surveys. And third, it integrates with popular CRMs like Salesforce and Zendesk.

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