Startups are all the rage in today's business world. They're essentially the trend when it comes to looking through companies that have the potential to grow into becoming full-fledged companies that can dominate existing markets or even start their market with their unique product or service exponentially.

Investors and aspiring entrepreneurs are always looking for the "Next Big Thing" whether it be to get the chance to ride through with a potential success story or just to get inspiration for their ambitions. Either way, startups are always teeming with life and potential for many in the business world.

But, there are so many startups nowadays that it can be hard to track which ones are doing well and which ones are a bit down under. In contrast to what many might think, startups have a high failure rate of 90%, with around 10% of startups already losing steam in the first year alone - This is all according to a handbook made by Failory.

In this article, we'll be looking at a list of eCommerce startups with some good signs, whether it be their performance as a company or in the services, products, or market that they are in.

1. Snackpass - Food Delivery Startup

SnackPass At A Glance

• Founded - 2016
• Company Status - Private
• Employee Count - 20
• Investor Count - 46
• Latest Deal Amount - $70.1M

Founded in 2017, Snackpass has made the rounds lately with investment pooling into a seemingly successful startup. The platform is a social food application that provides convenience to its users by making food orders faster, accessible, and affordable. 

Primarily, it's a mobile app that provides discounts to friends and has features for sending gifts and collecting points. Quite standard with any other food application. The app has become popular on college campuses and offices. The rise is quite expected as Snackpass has also merged with other social media functions making ordering food a more social activity.

Interestingly, the incoming rise of hybrid work with office workers opting for co-working spaces and the return of offices only offers more potential for the app to become even more successful.

Already, Snackpass has acquired multiple investments from different incubators with a $70 million super-sized series B package just for continuous expansion of the business into more markets in the United States.

Snackpass is becoming a very interesting startup to look forward to in the future with the continuous growth of 7x year-over-year. It's only going to get exciting from there.

2. Klarna - Fintech Startup

Klarna At A Glance

• Founded - 2005
• Company Status - Private
• Employee Count - 4,789
• Investor Count - 107
• Latest Deal Amount - Later Stage VC

Fintechs are also another field of startups that are getting their share of interest from investors. Klarna, a European-based upstart bank, has received a new $1 billion funding. The company is touted as the highest-valued private fintech company in the European market. 

Klarna is supposedly attracting both new and existing investors from all over with a frenzy for people to get their hands on the success train before the steam cools off. 

Klarna is a platform that exists in the concept of Buy-Now-Pay-Later schemes. In the easiest of terms, they provide users a means of buying products without having to pay for them up front as well as not resorting to the needs of credit cards.

It allows this scheme to be successful by offering online store integrations with their app as an option for check-outs. They also have their online shopping app where users can easily browse their online marketplace where eCommerce merchants sell their products. Users browsing this eCommerce platform primarily pay through Klarna as well.

For example, if you're planning to buy lingerie at a storefront on their eCommerce website as a gift for your wife, but your paycheck isn't coming in for a few more days, then you can just order it now and pay back the expense later once payday arrives. It's convenient, that's the main service.

The company is also expanding its services with Klarna trying to reach out for a better financial relationship with users by allowing them to open savings and current accounts. 

As of now, they are gunning for both Sweden and Germany, but certainly, there will be more countries to follow in the European market.

3. Cazoo - Used-Car Sales Platform

Cazoo At A Glance

• Founded - 2018
• Company Status - Public
• Employee Count - 3,822
• Investor Count - 10
• Stock Symbol - CZOO
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Used-car buying is becoming all the more common in today's time, and Cazoo is one of the platforms leveraging this growing market to their favor. Another European company that is set to dominate the market of alternatively used car buying, Cazoo, is set on its way to success.

One can even say that they're already successful today. The dealership has raised $1 billion from a reverse merger, ensuring the funding for expansion even further in the market and having the ammunition to go against its competitors.

Cazoo is widely known for it being a very successful company, especially with how they deal with customer experiences. According to one of the earliest investors, Alliott Cole, Kazoo is one of the most innovative firms in the European market since they've built an entire business with such complexity and risk at a very fast pace.

4. Bolt - One-Click Checkout Platform

Bolt At A Glance

• Founded - 2014
• Company Status - Private
• Employee Count - 500 - 1,000
• Investor Count - 76
• Latest Deal Amount - $1.3B

Bolt is primarily a software company that is also making headlines as a startup with exciting potential. However, has also recently stumbled. The platform initially started with successful fundraising activities, and the private valuation for the company grew exponentially from $6 billion in October 2021 to $11 billion in January 2022. 

The company had easily sideswiped its competitor Fast, which had raised around $120 million from backers and investment from Stripe. However, it imploded early on in April.

Bolt, while having an impressive background, has been put into question recently with a lawsuit from one of their major customers. As of now, there are reports of a slowdown in the company's revenue and customer growth.

The CEO, on the other hand, reported in his blog that the company has around 13.8 million shopper accounts with 131% year-over-year increases. It was also mentioned that the platform has around 836 total active merchant accounts across many different industries.

Overall, Bolt is having some rough shake-ups but is still an interesting booming eCommerce startup to look forward. 

5. Deliverr - Delivery Fulfillment Platform

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Deliverr At A Glance

• Founded - 2017
• Company Status - Private
• Employee Count - 424
• Investor Count - 13
• Latest Deal Amount - $250M

Deliverr is a Californian-based eCommerce fulfillment startup that has found itself to be in the spotlight for success. Recently, news came around that Shopify will be acquiring Deliverr for around $2.1 billion in cash and stock. 

This deal is the largest in Shopify's acquisition history. So, what's next for the future of Deliverr? Well, Shopify plans to combine Deliverr with the Shopify Fulfillment Network so that merchants will be able to use their store inventory and fulfill orders at the same time. 

The addition of Deliverr into Shopify is said to create a much more stable and stronger platform for merchant inventory management. There will also be a new service launching alongside these reports. Shop Promise will be primarily powered by Deliverr and is said to provide customers with two-day and next-day delivery features. 

Not to mention that there will be expanded options for freight, storage, and inventory preparation. In conclusion, Deliverr is coming up with an exciting future with this new acquisition.  

6. Aloa - Software Development Outsourcing

Aloa At A Glance

• Founded - 2015
• Company Status - Private
• Employee Count - 10
• Investor Count - 1
• Latest Deal Amount - Early Stage VC

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Primarily a platform built for the support of startups, Aloa.co is an upcoming and rising outsourcing service that allows investors and entrepreneurs to connect with talented software developers. 

The platform provides a convenient, affordable, and reliable way for talent acquisition, something that startups are in dire need of to ensure the success of their future. 

For example, if you're a tech startup and are looking to hire some python developers, then Aloa can easily do that for you at the same time; if you want to outsource the work, the same can be said with Aloa. It's an easy platform for tech startups to use.

When it comes to companies looking for special custom software development projects to meet their business needs, Aloa can be the best place to start looking for hired help.

The platform is looking to fulfill a certain niche in the market of software development and so far has seen considerable success in getting the needs of its partners and clients met. 

While there is no news of large investments for the company, it certainly has merit to say that the platform can become an interesting area for growth in the future.

7. CloudTalk.io - Customer Service

CloudTalk At A Glance

• Founded - 2016
• Company Status - Private
• Employee Count - 200
• Investor Count - 3
• Latest Deal Amount - $7.26M

CloudTalk is a SaaS eCommerce company that has also been making some significant strides in becoming a booming startup to look forward to in 2022. CloudTalk is another company hailing from Europe as a Bratislava-based startup. 

So far, it has raised around €6 million in Series A funding that was led by henQ and additionally joined by Point Nine Capital. CloudTalk has made a system for personalized customer service with their own specifically built virtual 'phone suite' that can integrate with the leading CRM systems in the market as well as work with additional support tools.

The platform is primarily targeted at small to medium-sized businesses, but their market encompasses all over the globe, with their presence already rooted in 80 countries. The company has reported that its valuation has multiplied by 8x since its initial seeding round in 2019 with €1.3 million initially.

8. JungleScout - Amazon Fulfillment

JungleScout At A Glance

• Founded - 2018
• Company Status - Private
• Employee Count - 200
• Investor Count - 1
• Latest Deal Amount - $110M

JungleScout is a commerce platform headquartered in Austin, Texas that provides business owners and eCommerce stores to utilize Amazon to sell products. JungleScout serves its customers the chance to manage their inventory, search for suppliers, and do extensive quality product research with their search and marketing analytics tools and sales intelligence features.

The platform is primarily revolving around Amazon, but recently they've been planning to expand their horizons on other services for marketable online retail companies as well. Recently JungleScout is planning to acquire Downstream Impact, a specialized service for Amazon advertising, the acquisition includes their machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies being integrated into JungleScout as well.

While still a startup, JungleScout is already a giant when it comes to business revenue, with their tools supporting around $8 billion in Amazon revenue with around half a million brands already using their software. 

To add to this, JungleScout is also planning to expand into China, and with the country being one of the biggest markets in the globe, there is a lot of wiggle room for JungleScout to become even more successful in the near future.

9. CartStack - Sales Recovery Tool

CartStack At A Glance

• Founded - 2012
• Company Status - Private
• Employee Count - 1/10
• Investor Count - N/A
• Latest Deal Amount - N/A

CartStack is a SaaS eCommerce business that serves to provide a unique service in recovering abandoned sales for eCommerce sites and merchants. It has numerous functional features and high-quality services, with abandoned carts and lost customer recovery being its primary go-to service. 

Additionally, CartStack also services its subscribers with exit-intent popups, email automation, SMS marketing, and their very own built-in sales and analytics tool. As of now, CartStack does not have any funding whatsoever, but the potential is there with its subscription service.

Around 20% of CartStack's customers are hotel chains around the globe, and its user base is expected to continue to grow, albeit possibly at a much slower pace as compared to other startups. Nevertheless, the platform remains to be in an interesting market for room to dominate and grow alone.

10. Shippo - Shipping Startup

Shippo At A Glance

• Founded - 2013
• Company Status - Private
• Employee Count - 300
• Investor Count - 35
• Latest Deal Amount - 2ndary - Private

Just like the last entry, Shippo is another SaaS eCommerce merchant that provides services that can help other eCommerce sites conduct business. In 2021, Shippo was valued at around $1 billion due to the continuous rise of eCommerce during the pandemic.

Additionally, Shippo has reported that they have around 100,000 customers and have already gained high-value customers and companies with their business. The company is working together with 50 large carriers globally, including USPS, UPS, and FedEx. 

Shippo aims to target small businesses as well as medium-sized enterprises as its main market as a shipping software but is also looking forward to expanding in other areas as well to further improve the eCommerce industry’s supply chains. Some well-known investors of Shippo are CEOs of Stripe, Twilio, and PagerDuty.

11. Attentive - SMS Marketing Solution

Attentive At A Glance

• Founded - 2016
• Company Status - Private
• Employee Count - 1,047
• Investor Count - 29
• Latest Deal Amount - Accelerator/Inc

Attentive is also another application that is making strides when it comes to funding in its market of eCommerce marketing. Headquartered in New York, In 2020, the app received $70 million after an initial $40 million. The timeline between these two funding projects was quite the second funding offer came in less than six months.

The reason for this was that the company was seeing great success with its services and products. The client list of Attentive was last reported to have grown to around 750 businesses all around the world. 

Not so far after these two initial tranches, Attentive managed to bag an additional $230 million Series D funding, making the entire company enter "unicorn" status as it is now floating at $2.2 billion in valuation. 

Attentive was one of the primary beneficiaries of the pandemic as it was also included in the $90 billion boost in online business sales. The startup is primarily offering services with its text marketing and analytics software in creating personalized messaging campaigns. 

In these messages, companies can include rich content from video, and audio, to GIFs. 

The platform can also easily integrate with other customer service and email software platforms, examples of which are Zendesk and Mailchimp. This makes it all the more effective in dealing with customer communication and improves business efficiency for its clients.

Additionally, Attentive also provides strategy playbooks when it comes to marketing courses for businesses to fully take advantage of their platform's capabilities. 

12. Contentful - API-first Content Platform

Contentful At A Glance

• Founded - 2013
• Company Status - Private
• Employee Count - 750
• Investor Count - 21
• Latest Deal Amount - $175M

Contentful is an upcoming unicorn startup with a value of around $3 billion. That's after a series of funding of around $175 million Series F led by Tiger Global. Contentful before was known as a UI-free content management system or, in other words, a headless CMS. But nowadays, it has added a lot more features.

It brings to the table an entirely unique new product offer and a next-generation business model that can add up to its current success.

Interestingly, the platform provides its user base the service of rapidly sharing content across applications and websites globally, from images to documents. 

Contentful's platform can be quite hard to understand, but basically, it's a platform that bridges the world's digital content. It provides different core package APIs that provide the ability to read and write content to its system and deliver this information as soon as possible at the best possible time. 

As opposed to other programs that provide companies an easier time developing applications, such as system testing software or development platforms, Contentful wants to share the load in running already developed software and speeding up their in-app content quickly. 

For example, if your platform is primarily dealing with selling online courses and have the need to quickly transfer and share this content, Contentful can manage a certain amount of the workload to make your networks faster.

It's a solid platform that already has a proven market to grow. It is even rumored to be aiming for an IPO soon and going public. No surprise from a startup unicorn that has seen exponential growth throughout the years 2020 and 2021.

Conclusion

Startups come in different ways, whether it be in their markets, success, growth, or management. Some might be doing better than others, or some might receive millions of funding while some might not even see funding at all. 

At the end of the day, all these companies and aspiring businesses have the potential to become something big, and that's the value of startups in the current business world.

Their stories and ongoing adventures are life-long lessons to take note of for both investors and aspiring startups looking to make their way to unicorn status.

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