The Leading 100 are the Innovative Tech Start-Ups Driving the Future of Brand-To-Consumer
The Leading 100 List recognizes high-impact technology start-ups that are transforming the direct-to-consumer business model and driving business value for brands as well as retailers. These companies are solving business problems, powering growth, and helping brands deliver on customer expectations through innovative, accessible, and powerful technology solutions.
All companies were vetted and selected using a rigorous methodology which measures Innovation, Business Impact, Commercialization & Customers, Teams and Experience, Competition, Media Buzz, and Investor Value Creation.
Streamlined interface for adding 3rd party Ecommerce data and integration functionality to SaaS platform.
Archive
$24 M
Emily Gittins
Enables brands to build and scale omni-channel resale programs that are financially and environmentally sustainable.
buywith
$9.5 M
Adi Ronen Almagor
Livestream shopping platform enabling retailers and brands to engage with new audiences and increase sales through influencer-led live shopping events and one-to-one sessions with brands’ representatives, held natively on their websites.
Canal
$27 M
Bennett Carroccio
Platform that allows retailers to sell third party products from brands without ordering inventory.
Carro
$52.4 M
David Perry
Connects participating Shopify stores together to enable cross-store selling, allowing brands to partner, revenue split, and sell a larger assortment of products.
Chord
$33 M
Bryan Mahoney
Commerce-as-a-service software that offers headless commerce technology and access to meaningful first-party data for both operators and developers.
Constructor.io
$61.1 M
Eli Finkelshteyn
AI-powered product discovery platform designed to increase conversions by personalizing user experiences.
Crossing Minds
$13.5 M
Alexandre Robicquet
AI-powered recommendation engine that can be integrated into existing tech stacks.
Curated For You
$5.9 M
Katy Aucoin
Platform that measures consumer motivations using machine learning, then uses the data to provide real-time personalized product recommendations.
cym.bio
$27 M
Roy Avidor
Drop ship and marketplace automation platform designed for digital sales.
Drop
$5.5 M
Derrick Fung
Social commerce platform that allows brands & creators to engage with their Instagram following through automated direct messages
Feel
$4 M
Oren Harnevo
Enables brands to add a ‘buy with an expert’ experience to their website.
Fermat
$12 M
Rishabh Jain
A distributed commerce platform that lets brands create unique storefronts for each piece of content enabling consumers to directly purchase within paid social channels.
Intelligems
$4.3 M
Drew Marconi
Suite of tools designed to help businesses run A/B tests to find optimal prices, discounts, shipping rates.
Lily.ai
$39.5 M
Purva Gupta
AI platform that bridges the gap between brand and customer language by injecting customer-centric product attributes into site search engines and recommendation systems.
Nostra.ai
$4.2 M
Arthur Root
Conversion optimization software that uses AI to optimize Shopify Websites.
Novel
$8 M
Roger Beaman
No-code web3 commerce platform enabling brands to create and launch premium experiences for their communities, through both a fiat on-ramp to NFT drops and robust tokengating for products, discounts, and content.
Rebuy
$21.4 M
John Erck
Leading ecommerce personalization platform that creates intelligent shopping experiences through search, recommendations, and merchandising.
Recurate
$17.5 M
Adam Siegel
Resale operating system enabling brands to create a circular eco-system by integrating peer-to-peer, take-back, and several other resale models.
Retention.com
–
Adam Robinson
Offers email-based retargeting to help brand increase revenue from cart abandonment and grow their email lists.
RevLifter
$11.8 M (£9.5 M)
Simon Bird
Platform that analyzes onsite behavior and delivers and optimizes intelligent offers in real-time.
Shoppinggives
$8.2 M
Ronny Sage
Allows businesses to build a custom and compliant giving experience by donating a percentage of each purchase to a nonprofit that the customer selects during checkout.
Smartrr
$17 M
Gabriella Tegen
Enables direct-to-consumer brands on Shopify to offer customizable subscriptions and memberships to their customers.
Tapcart
$65.1 M
Eric Netsch
SaaS platform that enables e-commerce merchants to launch and manage mobile apps for their brands.
TryNow
$24 M
Benjamin Davis
Lets shoppers try products before they pay, risk-free for both the shopper and the merchant.
Wizard
$50 M
Melissa Bridgeford
AI-powered SMS commerce platform that empowers brands to engage, transact, and market to their customers via text.
Marketing
Company Name
Funding
CEO(s)
Company Description
Accrue Savings
$29.7 M
Michael Hershfield
Platform that allows brands to offer cash rewards to incentivize customers when they save up for big purchases.
Archive.com
$12 M
Paul Benigeri
AI-powered social commerce platform that automates digital marketing workflows.
Breinify
$17.6 M
Diane Keng
AI-powered personalization engine that creates a customized digital experience at an individual level across all marketing channels.
Checkmate
$5 M
Harry Dixon
Smart shopping tool that automatically aggregates all shopping information for consumers from checkout deals to shipment tracking.
Disco
$25.8 M
Connor Sherline
AI-driven partnership platform that makes recommendations to consumers across brands.
Fondue
$10.5 M
Oren Charnoff
An app that embeds into existing software to offer customers CashBack rewards in place of discount codes that allows them to choose their incentives.
Howl Technologies
$27 M
Li Haslett Chen
Creative platform that provides commerce and payment tech to facilitate creator/brand collaboration.
Kahoona
$4.35 M
Gal Rapoport
First-party audience data platform that helps brands collect accurate, scalable, actionable, and privacy-preserving user data.
Kevel
$22.2 M
James Avery
APIs that provide brands access to hundreds of ad serving features (campaign controls, ad decisioning, reporting & analytics) to power their ad supported revenue models, such as native ads, sponsored listings, display, audio and video.
Measured
$21 M
Trevor Testwuide
Media optimization platform powered by incrementality intelligence so ecommerce brands can validate, plan, test and optimize advertising spend.
Northbeam
$15 M
Austin Harrison
Platform for marketing measurement and insight generation powered by machine learning.
Okendo
$31.3 M
Matt Goodman
Platform that helps brands manage and showcase customer ratings, reviews, user-generated media and product questions.
Postscript
$106.2 M
Adam Turmer
Platform that enables brands to create and manage SMS marketing campaigns with detailed analytics.
Storyblok
$58 M
Dominik Angerer
Back-end only content management system supplying an easy user interface to create and manage content across any digital platform.
Superfiliate
$3 M
Andy Cloyd
Creates personalized storefronts for a brand’s influencers, ambassadors, and affiliates in order to encourage word-of-mouth advertising.
Toki
$2 M
Elise DeCamp
Customizable loyalty program offering one global login and a fun, gamified experience.
Tracer
$20.5 M
Jeffrey Nicholson
Data intelligence platform for marketers that provides a single source of truth across all data enabling better decisions.
Treat
$8.5 M
Matthew Osman
AI generated ad creative providing super-personalized lifestyle photos.
Vyrill
$4.6 M
Ajay Bam
Video marketing and intelligence platform powered by in-video search that enables enterprises to ‘search’ or ‘google’ inside any video on web or mobile to unlock video data.
ZMO.ai
$8 M
Ella Zhang
Provides high-quality AI model images and virtual studio that help fashion brands improve efficiency and save cost.
Stores
Company Name
Funding
CEO(s)
Company Description
Adentro
–
Nitin Duggal
Platform that pairs with in-store wifi to collect and analyze customer data based on their visit behavior.
Leap
$53 M
Amish Tolia, Jared Golden
Retail-as-a-service platform that covers all aspects of store development and operations, including physical space, staffing, and managing all technology infrastructure.
Pathr.ai
$5.3 M
George Shaw
AI-powered spatial intelligence platform using anonymous location data to derive actionable real-time insights for operations and marketing.
Quorso
$12.6 M
Julian Mills
AI-powered productivity suite for store leaders that analyzes data to present a prioritized list of tasks, alerts, and opportunities to users.
Radar
$65 M
Spencer Hewett
RFID and computer vision platform that automates inventory management, analytics and checkout in physical stores using a proprietary hardware and software platform to track and precisely locate in-store inventory & people in real time.
Sparkplug
$11.5 M
Andrew Duffy
Incentive management platform for frontline employees that offers fully-automated sales incentives and easy vendor-sponsored rewards.
Inventory, Merchandising, Product & Pricing
Company Name
Funding
CEO(s)
Company Description
Anvyl
$30.8 M
Rodney Manzo
Supply chain visibility software designed to facilitate real-time collaboration between teams, suppliers and technology.
Browzwear
$35 M
Avihay Feld
3D apparel design solution that allows brands to create 3D models of garments and accessories.
Cogsy
$6.6 M
Adii Pienaar
Inventory optimization and operations platform designed for Shopify merchants.
Fuse Inventory
$5.7 M
Rachel Liaw
Inventory planning system that pulls data from across systems and creates a predictive inventory plan.
Syrup Tech
$7.3 M
James Theuerkauf
AI-powered inventory optimization for omnichannel brands and retailers.
Toolio
$10.3 M
Eytan Daniyalzade
Cloud-based merchandising platform that automates critical workflows, provides real-time insights, and enables remote collaboration.
Check Out & Payments
Company Name
Funding
CEO(s)
Company Description
Catch
–
Nico Perdomo
Rewards platform that helps both merchants & consumers to save money by cutting out credit card processing fees.
Link Money
$30 M
Eric Shoykhet
Pay-by-Bank solution that provides merchants with an alternate payment solution than traditional, more expensive payment methods.
Refundid
$14.2 M
Brad Karney
Service that allows a customer to access their refund instantly before they’ve even sent back their return.
Skipify
$11.1 M
Ryth Martin
AI-powered technology that creates a streamlined checkout experience.
Customer Experience
Company Name
Funding
CEO(s)
Company Description
DataMilk
$8 M
Peter Szalontay
Provides AI algorithms that help commerce companies safely and easily build powerful UX using their shoppers’ behavioral data.
Fit:Match.ai
$10 M
Haniff Brown
Patented platform that uses a combination of depth sensors and computer vision to match shoppers to the best-fitting products for their 3D body shape.
Hexa 3D
$27.2 M
Yehiel Atias
Full tech stack designed to create, manage, display and analyze your 3D projects.
Humankind
$4.2 M
David Weissman
Conversational commerce platform that combines AI and human expertise to supercharge retailer’s sales conversations with shoppers.
Kerv
$34 M
Gary Mittman
Video platform that utilizes AI and ML techniques to transform any video content into a fully interactive experience.
Maropost
$1 M
Ross Andrew Paquette
On-demand digital marketing, Ecommerce, and infrastructure platforms.
Obsess
$13.5 M
Neha Singh
Experiential e-commerce platform enabling brands to create fully branded, immersive 3D virtual stores that drive brand awareness, customer engagement and loyalty.
Revuse
$30 M
Boaz Grinvald
AI-enabled software that analyzes customer reviews and online opinions to deliver customer experience intel and insights.
Thankful.ai
$12 M
Theodore Mico
Automation software created to improve online customer service, using artificial intelligence to deflect half of inbound queries that are repetitive tasks, leaving customer care agents more time to solve difficult issues.
Vizit
$10 M
Jehan Hamedi
Helps brands measure, understand, and optimize the impact of their visual content using AI technology.
Vntana
$12.5 M
Ashley Crowder
3D Content Management System (CMS) designed to easily upgrade existing IT infrastructure for 3D scalability.
Yogi
$7.2 M
Gautam Kanumuru
AI-powered customer feedback analytics service that processes online and offline feedback sources.
Data
Company Name
Funding
CEO(s)
Company Description
Daasity
$20.7 M
Dan LeBlanc
Provides data architecture and analytics solutions for omnichannel consumer brands.
Eon
$10 M
Natasha Franck
Software that serves as an operating system for physical products, enabling brands to create and manage item-level digital Identities for products.
Fairing
$4.5 M
Matt Bahr
Uses survey data to deliver consumer insights regarding personalization, conversion, customer experience, and attribution, while keeping responses linked to the shopper and their transactions.
FlagshipRTL
–
Justin Abrams
Platform that pairs retail brands’ first party data with machine learning algorithms to optimize retention, inventory sell-through and revenue
Haus Analytics
$5.8 M
Zach Epstein
Platform that combines causal inference and econometrics with experimentation to help brands measure incrementality.
Lexer
$33.8 M
David Chinn
Provides a customer-centric view, and the tools to analyse data to better understand and engage with customers.
Pairzon
–
Galit Arizon
AI-powered data intelligence platform pairs in-store transactions from anonymous shoppers with their online identities, empowering retailers to find their in-store audiences online.
Rutter
$28.5 M
Peter Zhou
Universal API designed to integrate with any commerce, accounting, or payments platform, enabling users to connect and view all of their business’ data in one place.
Seek.ai
$7.5 M
Sarah Nagy
AI-powered data solution that automatically generates and maintains code for answering ad-hoc questions, built on company-specific foundation models that easily integrates with popular database vendors and collaboration tools.
SoundCommerce
$35.9 M
Eric Best
Platform that unifies omnichannel data across systems, functions, partners and geographies to provide better analytics and improve personalization.
Triple Whale
$52.7 M
AJ Orbach
AI data platform that enables Ecommerce businesses to easily manage and automate analytics, attribution, merchandising, forecasting and more.
Last Mile & Third Party Logistics
Company Name
Funding
CEO(s)
Company Description
Factored Quality
$5.6 M
Prince Ghosh
Enables brands to run quality control on their global supply chains.
Fillogic
$9 M
Bill Thayer
Provider of local market logistics that converts underutilized space in shopping centers and malls into full-service, technology-enabled micro logistics hubs.
FloorFound
$15.2 M
Chris Ritcher
Software platform that facilitates returns and resales of oversized products for retailers by leveraging a network of freight, transportation, and logistics partners.
Floship
$9.2 M
Joshua Tsui
Global e-commerce logistics & fulfillment solution with an extensive circular supply chain ecosystem powered by intelligent technology.
Loop
$125.5 M
Jonathan Poma
Fully automated return portal that handles all aspects of the returns and refund process.
MasonHub
$21.6 M
Donny Salazar
Modern fulfillment platform for beauty and wellness brands.
Osa Commerce
$10 M
Yifat Baror, Padmanabhan Raman and Shlomi Amouyal
Integrated, data-first platform providing true end-to-end visibility to resolve supply chain issues and anticipate customer and potential incidents in real-time.
Outerspace
$34.9 M
Ricky Choi
An OPS center providing combined 3PL services and a proprietary operations tech stack to help improve customer experience.
Pandion
$34.9 M
Scott Ruffin
Platform for e-commerce players to manage capacity problems and manage logistics using machine learning to avoid shipping delays and optimize delivery networks.
Pipe 17
$8 M
Mohamad Afshar
Omnichannel order operations platform for brands and fulfillment providers.
Sustainability
Company Name
Funding
CEO(s)
Company Description
EcoCart
$17.5 M
Dane Baker
Sustainability software that calculates ecommerce brands’ ecological footprints through machine learning and then enables them or their customers to offset the emissions of their orders through front-end experiences
LiquiDonate
$2.25 M
Diz Petit
Donation platform for retailers with overstock and excess inventory.
SuperCircle
$12 M
Chloe Marie Songer
Digitally enabled reverse logistics system that links retail with the waste management industry to help eliminate post-consumer clothing waste through recycling.
Web3
Company Name
Funding
CEO(s)
Company Description
Hang
$20 M
Matt Smolin
Platform that allows brands to offer membership programs, spin up rewards, and create tiered point systems by harnessing game design and Web3 technology.
Try Your Best
$11.8 M
Ty Haney
Community management platform that allows brands to directly connect with and reward fans for taking valuable actions.
Greenlist
The Lead watches the next generation of innovators – The Greenlist are a set of emerging startups that show significant promise.
Company Name
Funding
CEO(s)
Company Description
42 Technologies
$1.6 M
Peter Yang
End-to-end data omnichannel analytics and reporting platform built for the retail industry.
Caden
$9.4 M
John Roa
Open data platform that allows users to securely access and own data from various brands, and offers users the option to share their data for advertising purposes in exchange for a portion of the app’s revenue.
Ghost Retail
–
Daniel Shaw
Fully integrated one-to-one live video co-shopping platform that allows shoppers to engage with associates and brand ambassadors all the way through the process from discovery through checkout and beyond.
Lucky Labs
$3.3 M
Sneh Parmar
Software platform that integrates with retailer inventory systems and connects to brands DTC websites for omnichannel fulfillment.
Selectika
–
Tali Bezalel Hamdi
Visual AI and recommendation platform that uses image recognition to extract product attributes from a retailer’s catalog, analyze shopper’s preferences, and automatically provide each shopper with their own optimal digital assortment.
Spacewise
–
Chalid El Ashker
Booking platform for short-term space leasing that streamlines communications and applications for both property managers and prospective tenants alike.
Treet
$6.4 M
Jake Disraeli
Branded peer-to-peer resale platform enabling fashion to become more circular and control the secondary market for their products.
Yofi
$1.5 M
Jordan Shamir, Alex Shamir
Protects business from bots, serial returners, and loyalty abusers with a real-time AI Identity platform.
Standouts
The Lead selects four Standout Award recipients for their ability to make an impact in a relatively short time.
Company Name
Funding
CEO(s)
Company Description
Cart.com
$380 M
Omair Tariq
Commerce software, services, and logistics infrastructure that enable merchants to seamlessly accelerate their growth with capabilities previously only available to the world’s largest companies.
Visionary Award is for the company whose work, vision, and future-forward perspective are a signal for where things are headed. An industry bellwether, this brand’s products, strategies, and investments, set a new standard for innovation and evolution.
Firework
$269.3 M
Vincent Yang
Video commerce solutions built for websites, apps, and stores that enable customers to create and host shoppable video content for engaging product discovery and connection with consumers.
Moonshot Award is for the startup that took the greatest risk in an unproven category and prevailed. This award is given to a company that is building something extraordinary powered by an exceptional team that can execute and succeed.
Newstore
$155.4 M
Stephan Schambach
Mobile-first, modular cloud platform providing POS, order management, clienteling, inventory and native consumer apps for retail brands worldwide.
The Breakout award goes to the company we saw break out from the pack in 2022. A company we think is one of the most exciting among the exceptional startups here. This is also a company with a great vision and team, thoughtfully building their business.
Trove
$122.5 M
Gayle Tait
Resale channel that uses technology to automatically identify, route, and issue credit for any pre-worn item.
Trailblazer Award is for a start-up that redefined its category and changed the trajectory of the industry. Not only was this company among the pioneers in solving a problem, and putting knowledge and passion to practice, but it did so in a way that inspired others to follow.