While plenty of companies struggled in 2020 due to the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, the world of tech surged. Outside the struggles of a microchip shortage, most tech companies grew and excelled in 2020. Further, some lesser-known companies like Zoom became brand name identities given the market’s new demands in the market. While hopefully, in 2021, a return to semi-normalcy is eminent, there are still plenty of tech companies ready to explode 2021. If you’re looking for companies to invest in or just fascinated to see what companies might be on the verge of a Zoom-like blow-up–look no further. Here are the tech-based companies on the verge of breaking big in 2021.
Cockroach Labs is a software firm that develops commercial database management systems. This company has just over half a decade of existence under its belt and was started by three former Google employees. Cockroach presently is best known for its production of “CockroachDB” a cloud-native SQL database that is constant, resilient, and capable of massive scaling to modern cloud applications. Revenue doubled in 2020, and Cockroach projects similar rapid expansion as it believes it will double its workforce from 200 to 400 employees by the end of the fiscal year.
Confluent is actually a commercial version of the previously existing Apache Kafka open-source system. Confluent focuses on managing system application messaging in high volume spaces with real-time streaming data to an app. Kafka was particularly appreciated by a company like LinkedIn or Netflix for its reliability and capacity for understanding operational metrics. Confluent makes it even easier if your company doesn’t have an enormous team of developers to utilize Kafka. Confluent raised $250 million in Series E funding in April 2020, and total funding in the company is at $456 million with a valuation of $4.5 billion.
Funnel
Based in Sweden, Funnel is a software-as-a-service company that focuses on blending and cleaning marketing and advertising data for clients to provide understanding into consumer practices and needs. Funnel provides their software off a tiered basis, with their base software sold at $499/month. Funnel’s CEO told TechCrunch, “Automating the collection and preparation of the data has proven to be a tough thing to do right, and we wanted to make sure we were the best at this, which we now confidently can say we are as we hear that again and again from customers”. Funnel ended up securing a $47 million Series B funding round in January 2020 and is planning an expansion into U.S. markets.