LinkedIn report: These are the top 10 startup companies in the Denver area
KDVR Fox 31
DENVER (KDVR) — Denver was recently ranked the hottest labor market in the United States. One component behind a blossoming labor market is good businesses and companies to work for.
According to an inaugural survey by LinkedIn, these are the top 10 startup companies on the rise in Denver.
- Wiz, founded 2020 — Computer and Network Security
- UQUAL, founded 2020 — Financial Services
- Emporia, founded 2018 — Appliances, Electrical and Electronics Manufacturing
- Strive Health, founded 2018 — Hospitals and Health Care
- Homebound, founded 2018 — Construction
- Lunar Outpost, founded 2017 — Aviation & Aerospace
- Orbit Fab, founded 2018 — Defense & Space
- Umoja Biopharma, founded 2019 — Biotechnology Research
- Enveda Biosciences, founded 2019 — Biotechnology Research
- Crusoe, founded 2018 — IT Services and IT Consulting
To determine the list, LinkedIn accessed its data on four different pillars to compile them into a final ranking. The pillars were employee growth, jobseeker interest, member engagement within the company and its employees, and how well these startups have pulled talent from LinkedIn Top Companies.
To be eligible to be ranked, the companies had to be headquartered in the United States, fully independent, privately held, have 30 or more full-time employees in the city and be seven years old or younger.
Seven of the 10 companies in the rankings are headquartered in the Denver metro with the three others holding at least 30 full-time employees in the city.
These companies cover a variety of industries with only two of them, Umoja Biopharma and Enveda Biosciences, possessing the same industry title. One thing all of these companies do have in common is they all occupy a space in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) field.
According to StartupBlink, an organization that monitors the best startup ecosystems in the world, Denver ranks as the 13th-best city for startups in the U.S., the 14th-best in North America and the 31st-best globally.
They have registered 1,185 Denver startups in their database which represents about 2% of the startups in the country. StartupBlink reported that nine of the Denver startups in their database have reached unicorn status, a term used for private startups that have surpassed a valuation of $1 billion.