10 fast-growing companies you've (probably) never heard of.

Thread 👇

1/ @Cubii

Ultra-portable elliptical trainer.

Why the 📈?

-Part of growing workout @ home trend
-Super small (fits under a desk or table)
-Proprietary tracking app
-Smart "fit while you sit" branding
-Sizable community of Cubii users
@cubii 2/ @undraw_co

Open source illustration library.

Why the 📈?

-1000s pro-level illustrations
-As illustrations replace stock photos, demand for illustrations=📈
-Part of growing open source media libraries (music, images and icons)trend
@cubii @unDraw_co 3/ @flodeskinc

Email service provider that focuses on design.

Why the 📈?

-No-frills UI
-Appeals to Shopify stores
-Attractive email templates
-Designed for ecommerce marketing
@cubii @unDraw_co @flodeskinc 4/ @pushpay

Venmo for church donations.

Why the 📈?

-7900+ churches use it
-Disrupting cash donation baskets
-Taps into cashless payments meta trend
@cubii @unDraw_co @flodeskinc @Pushpay 5/ @drinkdripdrop

Souped up version of Pedialyte for adults.

Why the 📈?

-Part of medical device --> consumer-facing product meta trend
-Weird flavors ( “spiced apple cider")
-Super portable powder sticks
-Mixed with water
@cubii @unDraw_co @flodeskinc @Pushpay @drinkdripdrop 6/ @Wallethub

Emerging player in the personal finance content space.

Why the 📈?

-More people searching for finance info
-Focus on SEO + content
-Free credit scores
@cubii @unDraw_co @flodeskinc @Pushpay @drinkdripdrop @wallethub 7/ @Blinkist

21st century version of CliffNotes.

Why the 📈?

-Part of the rise of audiobooks
-Aimed for busy professionals
-Shortens books into 15 min summary
-Aggressive PPC marketing
-VC-backed
@cubii @unDraw_co @flodeskinc @Pushpay @drinkdripdrop @wallethub @blinkist 8/ @rankmathseo

Direct competitor to the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin.

Why the 📈?

-Free "premium features"
-Supports Schema markup
-Rank tracking
-Part of “accessible martech” trend
@cubii @unDraw_co @flodeskinc @Pushpay @drinkdripdrop @wallethub @blinkist @rankmathseo 9/ @flodeskinc

Email service provider that focuses on design.

Why the 📈?

-No-frills UI
-Appeals to Shopify stores
-Attractive email templates
-Designed for ecommerce marketing
@cubii @unDraw_co @flodeskinc @Pushpay @drinkdripdrop @wallethub @blinkist @rankmathseo 10/ @HerbalCbd

Apple cider vinegar in gummy form.

Why the 📈?

-ACV = huge superfood trend
-Masks bitter ACV taste
-Highly portable
-Part of "gummification" trend (ie. CBD gummies)
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Bonus/

The Ordinary

Growing skincare brand.

Why the 📈?

-Cheap vs other natural skincare brands
-Simple packaging
-Extremely transparent names (“Niacinamide 10% + Zinc 1%”)
-Large retail distribution

More from Startups

There are a *lot* of software shops in the world that would far rather have one more technical dependency than they'd like to pay for one of their 20 engineers to become the company's SPOF expert on the joys of e.g. HTTP file uploads, CSV parsing bugs, PDF generation, etc.


Every year at MicroConf I get surprised-not-surprised by the number of people I meet who are running "Does one thing reasonably well, ranks well for it, pulls down a full-time dev salary" out of a fun side project which obviates a frequent 1~5 engineer-day sprint horizontally.

"Who is the prototypical client here?"

A consulting shop delivering a $X00k engagement for an internal system, a SaaS company doing something custom for a large client or internally facing or deeply non-core to their business, etc.

(I feel like many of these businesses are good answers to the "how would you monetize OSS to make it sustainable?" fashion, since they often wrap a core OSS offering in the assorted infrastructure which makes it easily consumable.)

"But don't the customers get subscription fatigue?"

I think subscription fatigue is far more reported by people who are embarrassed to charge money for software than it is experienced by for-profit businesses, who don't seem to have gotten pay-biweekly-for-services fatigue.

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