The Rocket List: 150 Startups & Scaleups Ready For Takeoff
The first U.S. edition of the annual list compiled by Otta, a job platform dedicated to helping job seekers find the most exciting jobs in tech
Otta, the job search platform designed to pair candidates with the most relevant roles in the tech industry, announced its first-ever Rocket List for the U.S. market. The 150 startups and scaleups featured on the list have raised USD $30BN between them in 2021 alone and collectively have more than 10,000 job openings, signaling extraordinary growth despite a turbulent year dominated by the pandemic.
The Rocket List highlights the top 1% of the fastest-growing startups and scaleups globally* for U.S. job seekers. The list can be filtered by city (including remote opportunities), company size, industry sector, funding raised and employee growth.
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“Otta prides itself on curating the best places to work in tech — an industry that continues to grow at record-pace and offer endless opportunities for job seekers. The Rocket List cuts through the noise to spotlight the highest-performing companies, many of which are under-the-radar hidden gems. We’re proud to share this list and help people take their careers to new heights,” said Sam Franklin, co-founder and CEO of Otta.
In order to aggregate the list, Otta analyzed over 75,000 data points across the 3,500 top-tier companies included on its platform. The rigorous requirements spanned three categories:
- Funding & Investors: The companies should have seen a strong upwards trend in funding volumes in the last 12 months, in addition to consistent raises every year (or an outsized seed round or Series A). As a result, Rocket List companies have raised a whopping USD $41BN between them, of which 75% was raised in this year alone. They’re backed by some of the world’s most reputable investors, with an average sixfold increase between funding rounds.
- Employee Growth: Otta looked at growing employee headcounts, in addition to quantifying the number of open roles. Listees have exploding headcounts, averaging a 300% increase in employee growth over the last year and continue to hire aggressively, with over 10,000 live roles across them.
- Mission & Purpose: Companies were evaluated for their ability to truly innovate in their respective industries.
*15,000+ US startups raised VC funding this year and last year.
Rocket List Highlights
Top 10 Companies: Most Funds Raised
- Databricks — $3,512,925,000
- Klarna — $3,374,540,000
- Chime — $2,053,090,000
- Revolut — $1,715,750,000
- Articulate — $1,500,000,000
- Thrasio — $1,217,060,000
- Hopin — $1,026,285,000
- Getir — $1,025,700,00
- Varo Money — $996,970,000
- Perch — $910,650,00
*Funds raised across all time
Top 5 Companies: Fastest Raising
- Class raised $164M over 4 rounds in <12 months (Sep 2020 to Jul 2021)
- Hopin raised $1B over 5 rounds in 18 months (Feb 2020 to Aug 2021)
- Thrasio raised $1.2B over 6 rounds in 24 months (Apr 2019 to Apr 2021)
- Whatnot raised $224m over 5 rounds in 18 months (Mar 2020 to Sep 2021)
- Lithic raised $110M over 3 rounds in 12 months (Jul 2020 to Jul 2021)
Trend: 3/5 of these companies are in the virtual platform space.
Fastest Growing Sectors
- Finance — 33%
- Software (SaaS) — 14%
- Healthcare — 13%
- Productivity — 13%
- Consumer — 9%
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Rocket List Findings Confirm Industry Trends
Amazon FBA acquirer businesses are exploding, with out-of-this-world funding figures.
Moonshot Brands, which has only 11 employees, raised a staggering $160M Series A.
Funding activity is at an all-time high as the world emerges from the pandemic.
More than 7,000 U.S. companies raised venture rounds from Seed to Series G+ this year.
Female founders are still massively underrepresented in the startup world.
Only 22/150 Rocket List companies were founded by women — that’s just 15%.
Virtual and eLearning startups have exploded.
Online learning platform Articulate raised a record-breaking $1.5B Series A earlier this year.
Companies are hiring and remote work is here to stay.
Rocket List companies grew by 316% in the last year and 4/10 open roles are remote.
