81 startups that will boom in 2021, according to the startup experts: venture capitalists - Business Insider

Bigeye provides the transparency data engineers, scientists, and analysts need to ensure their pipelines are producing data that's reliable enough for high-stakes business intelligence and machine learning applications," Balkansky said.Startup: BloomscapeVC: Johnson Yang, General CatalystRelationship: InvestorTotal funding raised: $24.2 millionHeadquarters: DetroitWhat it does: a plant shopping platform that delivers fully-grown potted plants to customers.Why it will boom in 2021: "Bloomscape has figured out how to ship thriving, beautiful plants in a box all across the country 365 days per year, resulting in better quality, variety, and convenience than your typical big box store Garden Center offers," Yang said."It's never been easier for new plant enthusiasts to buy and care for plants thanks to Bloomscape," he added.Startup: BuilderVC: Mike Duboe, Greylock PartnersRelationship: InvestorTotal funding raised: $3.25 millionHeadquarters: San FranciscoWhat it does: Builder helps merchants create their own ecommerce sites through a drag and drop visual editor, without needing to type a single line of code.Why it will boom in 2021: "Ecommerce will continue its rapid ascent in 2021 and the fastest growing segment -- merchants who are doing millions of revenue and have built their offering largely on Shopify and its partner ecosystem -- operates with minimal engineering support," Duboe said. VC just thinks it's cool Total funding raised: $19 millionHeadquarters: Brooklyn, NYWhat it does: A tool that automatically builds org charts and helps managers do recruitment planning and compensation planning tasks.Why it will boom in 2021: Bartlett said the company is "particularly important in a COVID world, as people aren't meeting new coworkers in person and there's uncertainty around hiring."Startup: ClayVC: Peter Boyce II, General CatalystRelationship: InvestorTotal funding raised: NAHeadquarters: New YorkWhat it does: a social networking app designed to help users connect with the people they've met throughout their life.Why it will boom in 2021: "Clay is a beautiful and private rolodex that helps you remember and be more thoughtful with the people in your life," Boyce said, adding that the app can serve a variety of functions, including revitalizing old family relationships and surfacing potential job opportunities. VC just thinks it's coolTotal funding raised: $266.1 millionHeadquarters: Austin, TXWhat it does: provides consumers with at-home lab tests ranging from food sensitivity tests to metabolism tests.Why it will boom in 2021: The company recently launched an at-home COVID-19 test, which Lee says will drive its growth numbers."Consumers are increasingly stressed about their health and well being, and have time to investigate and adopt new, more convenient and affordable ways to address their healthcare needs," Lee said.Startup: ExpelVC: Gene Frantz, CapitalGRelationship: InvestorTotal funding raised: $117.5 millionHeadquarters: Herndon, VAWhat it does: a cybersecurity monitoring service that offers companies simple instructions if it sees something amiss.Why it will boom in 2021: "Securing the enterprise has become an increasingly unmanageable problem for business leaders given the continually expanding cyber threat landscape and endemic shortage of cybersecurity personnel," Frantz said. VC just thinks it's cool.Total funding raised: $127.09 millionHeadquarters: San FranciscoWhat it does: digital healthcare programs for chronic conditions such as back and joint pain.Why it will boom in 2021: "As physical therapy and surgery continue to be postponed during the pandemic, folks with chronic conditions and pain are at risk for being left untreated," Lee said."Hinge Health provides a truly end-to-end solution by democratizing access to critical resources and quality services at a lower cost, and more conveniently to members," he said.Startup: HoneVC: Aileen Lee, Cowboy VenturesRelationship: InvestorTotal funding raised: $6.35 millionHeadquarters: San FranciscoWhat it does: Hone provides live professional development classes with experts on workplace topics like diversity and inclusion, remote 1:1 sessions, and trust building.Why it will boom in 2021: "As companies are increasingly distributed in 2021, Hone is perfectly positioned to replace location-based training and professional development classes with an even more engaging, convenient and impactful solution," Lee said. VC just thinks it's cool.Total funding raised: $5.03 millionHeadquarters: New YorkWhat it does: Lets brands and influencers easily share metrics related to sponsored partnerships.Why it will boom in 2021: Skarlin anticipates that brands partnering with influencers for marketing will increasingly turn to Lumanu to track and amplify their content.Startup: LydiaVC: Amit Jhawar, AccelRelationship: InvestorTotal funding raised: $72.78 millionHeadquarters: ParisWhat it does: Provides mobile payments, loans, checking accounts, and credit cards to a primarily French user base.Why it will boom in 2021: Lydia has become the dominant peer-to-peer payment platform in France, and Jhawar expects it to continue to expand as it rolls out new features like online checking accounts."Lydia has become a verb in France and next year will bring a whole set of new capabilities to continue the momentum," he said.Startup: MalomoVC: Gabby Cazeau, Harlem CapitalRelationship: InvestorTotal funding raised: $5.42 millionHeadquarters: IndianapolisWhat it does: Lets e-commerce brands turn customers' shipment tracking into a brand marketing channel.Why it will boom in 2021: "Through the pandemic, we've seen a massive shift towards e-commerce that will be the norm in the post-COVID era," Cazeau said, adding that Malomo lets companies "deliver on their brand promise through a delightful user experience post purchase."Startup: Melio PaymentsVC: Lauren Kolodny, Acrew CapitalRelationship: No relation. VC just thinks it's cool.Total funding raised: $143.5 millionHeadquarters: New YorkWhat it does: Provides a one-stop platform for small businesses to pay vendors and contractors.Why it will boom in 2021: While peer-to-peer payments companies like Venmo and CashApp have seen booming popularity, Melio brings a similar function to business-to-business transactions."With the majority of [small and midsize business] payments still happening via check, there's still a huge opportunity for digitization here," Kolodny says.Startup: NetlifyVC: James Cham, Bloomberg BetaRelationship: InvestorTotal funding raised: $97.51 millionHeadquarters: San FranciscoWhat it does: A web developer platform that can be used to build, deploy, and run web projects.Why it will boom in 2021: "31 years into the web, Netlify defined a new way to think about web development," Cham said, adding that the founders are "leading a shift in the core business model of the web—from feature based subscription pricing to value and consumption based pricing." Startup: OctoMLInvestor: Matt McIlwainRelationship: InvestorTotal funding raised: $19.6 millionHeadquarters: SeattleWhat it does: helps engineers make their machine learning models run more efficiently on different types of hardware. VC just thinks it's cool.Total funding raised: $57.5 millionHeadquarters: SeattleWhat it does: Pulumi's cloud platform lets developers build and automate modern infrastructure using standard languages like Python and Javascript.Why it will boom in 2021: "Pulumi provides a low barrier, feature-rich way for developers and dev teams to access the capabilities and advantages of cloud infrastructure without needing to write code in languages other than the ones with which they're familiar," Frantz says.Startup: Redox EngineVC: Chelsea Stoner, Battery VenturesRelationship: InvestorTotal funding raised: $50.16 millionHeadquarters: Madison, WIWhat it does: Hosts a cloud API that connects hospitals, doctors and labs with healthcare products and services.Why it will boom in 2021: The startup recently surpassed 1,000 clients, according to Stoner, as healthcare organizations increasingly turn to digital health tools amid the COVID-19 pandemic."We are in the very early innings of digital health, and Redox is well positioned to be a key enabler of the market in 2021 and beyond," Stoner said.Startup: RetoolVC: Chris Farmer, SignalFireRelationship: No relation. VC just thinks it's cool.Total funding raised: $99.05 millionHeadquarters: New YorkWhat it does: Socure uses AI to guard against fraud by examining behaviors to find indications that customers or business partners are not who they say they are.Why it will boom in 2021: "As we see an increasing number of companies enter financial services, and more legacy players innovate online, Socure will be a vital part of the stack that enables them to deliver consumer and B2B solutions in a secure and low-fraud way," Jhawar says.Startup: SoLo FundsVC: Mercedes Bent, Lightspeed Venture PartnersRelationship: No relation. Stir's strength is that it consolidates those in one place, according to Siegler."If you believe that creators are not just going to use one platform to monetize, this product is going to be increasingly needed as new avenues to monetize come online and diversifying revenue streams become more important," Siegler says.Startup: StockXVC: Roger Lee, Battery VenturesRelationship: InvestorTotal funding raised: $565 millionHeadquarters: DetroitWhat it does: StockX's marketplace lets people buy and sell high-demand sneakers, streetwear, bags, and collectibles with a focus on rare and limited edition items that fetch high prices.Why it will boom in 2021: "Despite unprecedented, industry-wide challenges in retail, StockX's digitally-native and asset-lite business model has proven to be quite resilient, allowing them to serve their consumers throughout COVID-19 with minimal disruption," Lee says, adding that the company is quickly expanding beyond its core Gen-Z demographic.Startup: SubstackVC: Alex Taussig, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Eurie Kim, ForerunnerRelationship: No relation to either VC, but Taussig publishes his own (free) newsletter on Substack.Total funding raised: $21.21 millionHeadquarters: San FranciscoWhat it does: Substack's platform lets writers create newsletters which can be sent exclusively to paying email subscribers or published publicly online. "Trace Data keeps all data secure in connected systems with a single platform, making it easier to manage all data at once."Startup: TranscendVC: Mark Goldberg, Index VenturesRelationship: InvestorTotal funding raised: $29.54 millionHeadquarters: San FranciscoWhat it does: Provides software for businesses to more easily comply with users' data privacy requests.Why it will boom in 2021: Goldberg says Transcend will become increasingly popular as privacy becomes an expectation for consumers."Privacy will be one of the biggest themes of the next decade, and Transcend is the emerging category leader in it," Goldberg said.Startup: UniverseVC: M.G. Siegler, Google VenturesRelationship: InvestorTotal funding raised: $17.32 millionHeadquarters: Brooklyn, NYWhat it does: Universe's platform lets merchants build ecommerce sites from their smartphones.Why it will boom in 2021: "The company took the time during the unfortunate reality of COVID during 2020 to hone in on and focus on a core mission: to enable anyone and everyone to build on the web and to build businesses while doing it," Siegler said. VC just thinks it's cool.Total funding raised: $211.27 millionHeadquarters: San FranciscoWhat it does: Founded by LendingClub founder Renaud Laplanche, Upgrade first launched with loans and credit card services and has more recently expanded into more banking tools like digital checking accounts.Why it will boom in 2021: Narasin expects the startup to see "tremendous uptake" next year thanks to its service offering a low-cost traditional term loan of up to $30,000 that users can draw down with a credit card, "giving them a longer term (multi-year) payback period and lower loan-like rates," he said.Startup: UptycsVC: Venky Ganesan, Menlo VenturesRelationship: No relation. VC just thinks it's cool.Total funding raised: $40.25 millionHeadquarters: Waltham, MAWhat it does: Uptycs' platform provides a dashboard for security teams that lets them monitor what's happening across their company and investigate unauthorized intrusions.Why it will boom in 2021: Cybersecurity teams need to be able to rapidly gauge potential security threats, Ganasan said, especially as they increasingly rely on cloud computing and shifting endpoints amid remote work.Uptycs has applied advanced modeling and database techniques for "real-time pipeline processing," Ganesan said, meaning it can crunch through tons of security-related data quickly.The result is "a security analytics platform for visibility and accelerated time to insight," he said.Startup: UserLeapVC: Bill Trenchard, First Round and Sarah Guo, GreylockRelationship: Trenchard is an investor. VC just thinks they're cool.Total funding raised: $16.1 millionHeadquarters: Austin, TXWhat it does: Provides telemedicine software and a marketplace that helps startups find healthcare providers and quickly ramp up virtual offerings.Why it will boom in 2021: "Demand for virtual care and telemedicine has accelerated during the pandemic, but building and managing national pools of physicians and other healthcare professionals is difficult," Yap says."Wheel has built a platform to efficiently attract health care providers and enable digital health companies to staff up quickly and flexibly," he said.Startup: Whisper.aiVC: Ted Wang, Cowboy venturesRelationship: No relation.