Top Seattle Startups to Watch (and Work for) in 2023

My Background

Hi, I'm Kieran! I worked in startups for five years at On Deck and Wefunder. Some of my favorite things that I've worked on during my career include:

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Wefunder Workaway: 12 founders working on a new idea, 7 days, 1 mansion in Hawaii. One of the teams we picked raised a Series A from Andreessen Horowitz, and two people who met during the trip got married...

On Deck: As employee #15, I contributed to the startup's growth from no revenue to a $20 million run rate in less than a year. I led the team that built the admission infrastructure to support and scale ~20 fellowships for founders, capital allocators, operators, and creators.

XX: Worked on a pre-YC accelerator program that invested $125K on an MFN SAFE into 8-10 teams per cohort.

ODX: Worked on a $100 million accelerator program that invested $125K for 7% into 100s of startups. We partnered with leaders like Flexport to build vertical industry tracks around supply chain & logistics, etc.

Ryan Marketing: Created an influencer marketing startup (2 million+ Instagram followers) during college with my twin brother and realized early that monetization for creators was broken. I learned a lot, and it paid enough to cover my schooling, rent, and meals.

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The Methodology

I considered several data points to arrive at the startups selected on this list, including company traction, funding raised, valuation, and investors. From my initial list, I then referenced each startup with my personal network to narrow down the list to the one you see below. I take my credibility seriously, so I do not take any money from startups who want to be included on this list to remain impartial. If you want to understand my analysis of startups and prefer long-form content, read my research on the top startups of 2023 afterward.

Convoy

The leading digital freight network.

Headquarters

Seattle, Washington

Industry

Mobility & Transportation

Founded

2015

Funding

$1.1 billion

Valuation

$3.8 billion

Traction

As of June 2023, Convoy reported that its network has seen 16% fewer crashes than the industry, and 99.95% of loads get delivered without a cargo claim.

As of June 2023, Convoy has a nationwide network of 400,000 dry vans and reefer trucks.

Convoy customers include The Home Depot, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Dollar Shave Club, Dollar General, Land O’Lakes, LG Electronics, and Anheuser-Busch.

As of April 2022, Convoy has leased 3,000 trailers and was on pace for $1 billion in revenue.

Full Profile

Shelf Engine

Demand planning solution.

Headquarters

Seattle, Washington

Industry

Food & Beverage

Founded

2015

Funding

$58.2 million

Valuation

Undisclosed

Traction

As of June 2023, Shelf Engine has helped customers expand their average gross margin by 15% and save 5 hours of labor per category, per store, per week.

As of March 2021, Shelf Engine was in 2,000+ grocery stores, adding 200 per month.

In 2021, Shelf Engine prevented 4.5 million pounds of food waste.

Full Profile

Boundless Immigration

A modern immigration company.

Headquarters

Seattle, Washington

Industry

Legal

Founded

2017

Funding

$45.3 million

Valuation

Undisclosed

Traction

As of June 2023, Boundless Immigration has rated 4.5/5 stars from 886 reviews on Trustpilot.

As of April 2021, Boundless Immigration has helped 70,000+ customers through the immigration process.

Full Profile

Crowd Cow

Online meat and seafood delivery.

Headquarters

Seattle, Washington

Industry

Food & Beverage

Founded

2015

Funding

$25.3 million

Valuation

Undisclosed

Traction

As of June 2023, Crowd Cow works with 100+ farms across 23 states, has maintained a 4.9/5 star rating on Google for 4+ years, and does 100% carbon-neutral shipments.

As of June 2023, Crowd Cow has 80K Facebook followers, 84.8K Instagram followers, 5.71K Youtube subscribers, and 6.6K Twitter followers.

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Mason

Power your device strategy with one unified platform.

Headquarters

Seattle, Washington

Industry

Hardware, Mobile

Founded

2015

Funding

$25.1 million

Valuation

Undisclosed

Traction

As of June 2023, Mason claims its platform saves customers 8 hours on average per provisioned device and has 18x device provisioning speed.

As of June 2023, Mason has 180 countries+ with connectivity support.

As of August 2019, Mason reported being on pace for $10 million+ in revenue.

In 2018, Mason saw 6x revenue growth over the previous year.

Full Profile

Rec Room

Rec Room is the best place to build and play games together.

Headquarters

Seattle, Washington

Industry

Consumer, Gaming, Virtual Reality

Founded

2016

Funding

$294 million

Valuation

$3.5 billion

Traction

As of May 2023, Rec Room has more than 82 million lifetime users, up from 37 million as of 2021.

As of May 2023, Rec Room’s Discord community has 127,823 members.

In 2022, Rec Room had 60 million players.

In Q1 2022, players visited 1.1 billion rec rooms.

As of December 2021, Rec Room’s monthly user count jumped ~450% since November 2020.

Full Profile

Avalanche Energy

Handheld fusion reactors.

Headquarters

Seattle, Washington

Industry

Climate, Fusion

Founded

2021

Funding

$45 million

Valuation

Undisclosed

Traction

As of June 2023, Avalanche Energy claims its fusion reactors have 5 Kilowatt capacity.

In April 2023, Avalanche Energy achieved 200 kilovolts for its second prototype reactor, making it the highest known operating voltage for any fusion device.

In May 2022, Avalanche Energy won a Pentagon contract.

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Strike Graph

An easy, flexible security compliance solution that scales efficiently with your business needs.

Headquarters

Seattle, Washington

Industry

Security & Compliance

Founded

2020

Funding

$11.9 million

Valuation

Undisclosed

Traction

Strike Graph supports eight frameworks, including SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR, and NIST 800-171.

Hundreds of customers use Strike Graph, including BlueFletch, Siemba, Outbound AI, Spiral, and Lydia.ai.

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Full Profile

Zap Energy

Fusion power, no magnets required.

Headquarters

Seattle, Washington

Industry

Climate, Fusion

Founded

2017

Funding

$207.8 million

Valuation

Undisclosed

Traction

As of June 2023, Zap Energy claims its plasma is 100,000x denser and lasts several microseconds longer.

In May 2023, the US Department of Energy awarded Zap Energy $5 million in federal funding to continue the development of its pilot plant.

Full Profile

OfferUp

Buy and sell locally.

Headquarters

Bellevue, Washington

Industry

Consumer, Marketplace, Shopping

Founded

2011

Funding

$381 million

Valuation

Undisclosed

Traction

In 2022, OfferUp was the 10th most downloaded shopping app in the United States.

In 2022, OfferUp’s annual user base was 56 million, up from 44 million in 2019 and 42 million in 2018.

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Temporal

Temporal simplifies your application logic to make your code easier to maintain and your developers more productive.

Headquarters

Bellevue, Washington

Industry

Dev Tools

Founded

2019

Funding

$203.5 million

Valuation

$1.5 billion

Traction

In 2022, Temporal Cloud surpassed 100 corporate customers.

As of May 2023, Temporal customers include Instacart, Stripe, DataDog, HashiCorp, Box, Checkr, Netflix, Comcast, Snap, Qualtrics, and Postman.

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nutpods

Dairy-free coffee creamer.

Headquarters

Bellevue, Washington

Industry

Food & Beverage, DTC

Founded

2013

Funding

$35.1 million

Valuation

Undisclosed

Traction

As of June 2023, nutpods has 137K Instagram followers, 34K Facebook followers, and 4.5K TikTok followers.

As of July 2019, nutpods was the #3 brand in the plant-based creamor category.

Between July 2018 and 2019, nutpods grew by 250% and expanded into 15,000 new retailers.

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Statsig

Feature management and experimentation platform.

Headquarters

Bellevue, Washington

Industry

Product Management Software

Founded

2021

Funding

$53.4 million

Valuation

Undisclosed

Traction

Statsig’s revenue grew from 0 to 1 million in 5 months.

Statsig’s customers include Cruise, Notion, Rippling, Microsoft, Ancestry, Flipkart, DispatchHealth, Rec Room, SoundCloud, and Made.

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Blue Origin

An American aerospace and space exploration company.

Headquarters

Kent, Washington

Industry

Space, Hardware, Aerospace

Founded

2000

Funding

$167.4 million

Valuation

Undisclosed

Traction

Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket has had 22 successful consecutive missions, including three escape tests.

Blue Origin’s New Shepard and New Glenn rockets have vertical take-off and landing architecture that have been reused 25 times with minimal refurbishment.

Full Profile