Take a Look at the Most Promising Startups of the Year

Forbes released a cool ranking of the most successful startups, noting that they could soon reach values ​​of about $ 1 billion. Let's meet the possible future billionaires:

CHAINALYSIS

• Founders: Michael Gronager (CEO), Jonathan Levin, Jan Moller
• Attracted investment: $ 53 million
• Revenue / year: $ 8 million
• Leading investors: Accel, Benchmark

The startup created a research software in the field of cryptocurrencies, which can shed light on how people use bitcoins, ethereum, lightcoins and other digital money. Financial institutions use this technology to test customers and comply with regulatory requirements to prevent money laundering. Government agencies, such as the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation can use it to identify illegal transactions and find out about potential perpetrators.
Before joining the team and founding Chainalysis, 49-year-old CEO Michael Gronager co-founded the Kraken cryptocurrency exchange, and 47-year-old technical director Jan Moller developed a "virtual wallet" for the "Mycelium" cryptocurrency.

CONTRAST SECURITY

• Founders: Arshan Dabirsiagi, Jeff Williams, Alan Naumann (CEO)
• Attracted investment: $ 122 million
• Revenue / year: $ 25 million
• Leading investors: Acero Capital, Warburg Pincus

In 2010, 52-year-old Jeff Williams began developing a program to automate software security monitoring. In 2014, together with Arshan Dabirsiagi, he founded the company "Contrast Security" in Los Altos (California). The technology they developed verifies the running code of mobile applications and notifies developers of potential vulnerabilities. In 2016, in order to expand its business, "Contrast Security" hired Alan Naumann, former CEO of the 41st Parameter, who now helps detect Internet fraud, as executive director.

CYBEREASON

• Founders: Lior Div (CEO), Yossi Naar, Jonathan Stream-Amit
• Attracted investment: $ 189 million
• Revenue / year: $ 50 million
• Leading investors: CRV, Lockheed Martin, Softbank, Spark Capital

Lior Div, Yossi Naar and Jonathan Stream-Amit met in the Israeli army. Being engaged in cyber security in the military, the programmers came up with "Cybereason" - a cloud platform that constantly monitors and responds to threats. The company was founded in Israel in 2012, and a year later moved to Boston.

DAVE

• Founders: Paras Chitracar, Jason Wilk (CEO), John Volanin
• Attracted investment: $ 13 million
• Revenue for 2018: $ 19 million
• Leading investors: Mark Cuban

As a student at Loyola Marymount University, Jason Wilk, now 34, was always in short supply with credit cards. An avid Reddit user, he had often seen complaints about the fees banks charge for overdrafts. Thus, in 2016, he launched the startup "DAVE". The application tracks users' expenses and alerts them when the balance on the cards is close to zero. In April 2017, DAVE became the "app of the day" in the AppStore. In just two years, it has been downloaded almost 10 million times. 

divvy

• Founders: Blake Murray (CEO), Alex Bean
• Attracted investment: $ 257 million
• Revenue for 2018: $ 8 million
• Leading investors: Insight Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Pelion Venture Partners

Divvy provides businesses with free budgeting, fraud prevention and cost management tools. It offers Mastercard cards and charges commissions from banks when they pay for purchases. Alex Bean and Blake Murray have managed to attract over 3,000 corporate clients, including WordPress, Evernote and Qualtrics.

Duolingo

• Founders: Louis von Ahn (CEO), Saverin Hacker
• Attracted investment: $ 108 million
• Revenue for 2018: $ 36 million
• Leading investors: CapitalG, Kleiner Perkins, Union Square Ventures

Duolingo is one of the most popular language learning and translation platforms in the world. It is used by over 28 million people a month. Most use the free version of the app. The CEO of Duolingo was a professor of computer science. Before starting a company in Pittsburgh, Louis von Ahn sold two inventions to Google, one of which you surely know of –  "reCAPTCHA". Luis von Ahn is an immigrant from Guatemala. He claims that his knowledge of English has fundamentally changed his life and that’s why he now offers free training to all those who want to learn the language.