10 Highly Successful Online Startups To Inspire Your Business It’s the age of the Internet. Everyone is online–your parents, uncle, a cousin from farms, and even people you think you know, but you’re confusing someone else. Consumers, agents, and producers are endangered species, and the tedious hours of browsing through bazaars are gone. It’s certainly easier to move your pointers through the lengths of a screen than to move your tired legs in the crowded market, right? So, the trends are changing, and people are tweeting. Internet is no longer ‘the next big thing, and it is “the big thing” now. Since everything happens on the Internet, putting your business online will be a logical and far-sighted decision. If you want to take your business online but you do not have sufficient experience, or for some reason, your online business is not taking off as you expected to, you can follow the examples of the below-mentioned successful online startup companies that shine like Venus in this vague glitz of the Internet. 1. Kaltura Founded In: 2006 Founded By: Ron Yekutiel, Shay David, Michal Tsur, and Eran Etam Kaltura is an open-source software company established in 2006. The company allows publishers and content owners to publish, manage, monetize and analyze their videos and other rich-media content. Kaltura’s Online Video Platform is based on software, enabling any site to add advanced video and rich-media capabilities. Kaltura was initially based on the collaborative Wiki model but later decided to provide an open-source video platform focusing on universities, media companies, and service providers. Having already raised more than 25 million dollars in funding, Kaltura teaches online entrepreneurs to target a handful of niches and master them with care and passion. 2. Taboola Founded In: 2007 Founded By: Adam Sigdola Enough with shoes, shirts, and flower bouquets. We are going to market web content. With this quirky idea, Taboola has managed a revenue run rate of $250 million. What is impressive about Taboola is that it has only 120 employees, yet it has managed to attract high-profile clients like BBC, USA Today, and Boston Globe. Taboola is the best content marketing platform on the Internet. It provides a web widget to content creators on their website, which links to other similar posts, photos, and videos. Recently, Taboola announced that it served 150 billion recommendations to 400 million unique users. 3. Imgur Founded In: 2009 Founded By: Alan Schaaf Imgur, pronounced “Imager,” is an online image sharing and hosting community. Alan Schaaf initially developed the site as a side project while he attended Ohio University for Computer Science. Originally, it was intended as a gift to the online community Reddit, but the site took off from its startup, seeing the number of views go up to millions from thousands in months. In 2012, there were 300 million images uploaded, 364 billion impression views counted, and 42 petabytes of data transferred. In April 2014, Imgur received funding of USD 40 million from investor Andreessen Horowitz. 4. ShoeDazzle Founded In: 2009 Founded By: Brian S. Lee, Robert Shapiro, M.J. Eng, and Kim Kardashian ShoeDazzle is a personalized online styling platform and store. It helps women discover and buy shoes, accessories, and apparel. ShoeDazzle has seen a meteoric rise since its launch. The company boasts 13 million members. Days were not always this sunny for ShoeDazzle. In 2011, the company completely dumped its hugely popular and successful models. The company never gave up despite minor bumps. The company kept faith in e-commerce, and since restructuring its e-commerce software model in 2011, it has never looked back. 5. LCDcycle Founded In: 2013 Founded By: Chris Koerner What is broken, that cannot be fixed? Plenty of frustrated gadget users will come up with the answer to the broken screens. If you are thinking of giving up on your beloved phone, consult LCDCycle. LCDcycle repairs smartphone screens. They prevent myriads of smartphones from being dumped into the trash. Their business is also a wholesale of smartphone parts to repair shops. A pioneer of smartphone repairs, Chirs Koerner, deserted the traditional ways and took his business online. Innovative and “green,” LCDcycles has attracted high-profile publications like CNET, Mashable, and Gizmodo. The company has acquired more than $60 million in funding, and new users are signing up each day for their private showroom curated to their indicated fashion preferences. 6. Voxy Founded In: 2010 Founded By: Paul Gollash and Gregg Carey There are thousands of language learning apps on the market, so why does Voxy stand out? Because Voxy helps learn English through small practical lessons that can be implemented in real life. With the advanced propriety technology, Voxy could have easily expanded its services to other languages, but it stuck to its purpose. The company has developed a loyal fanbase of English learners. The app boasts 3 million users and more than USD 15 million in funding. 7. Javelin Founded In: 2010 Founded By: Trevor Owens and Grace Ng Owens and Grace worked on their startups, hoping something would spark their business. They already had a hefty load of their startups on their heads, and what did they decide? To work on their idea of a full-time company to help aspiring entrepreneurs turn their concepts into a business. Since the startup, they have hosted numerous workshops to help aspiring entrepreneurs achieve their dreams and make serious money on the side. The company has already hosted educational workshops in more than 200 cities worldwide, and they have an ambitious plan to extend it to 600 by next year. They help entrepreneurs in different stages of their business, from sending money abroad to completing all the legalities. Whether you are an aspiring entrepreneur who wants to start a new business or an already established one looking for a trial on new ideas without wasting your precious bucks, Javelin will always help you. 8. Getaround Founded In: 2010 Founded By: Sam Zaid, Jessica Scorpio, and Elliot Kroo Your uncle might lend you his lawnmower; if you are close enough with your cousin, he might lend you his car. What will a stranger give to you? Nothing, but that was until Getaround came into existence. If you are looking for a car to rent or otherwise make some extra cash renting the vehicle you’re not using, join the community of more than 200,000 Getaround members; your life will surely be more manageable. For lenders who do not want renters to have access to a key, there is also an option for renters to open the car door without a key. This is made possible by Getaround. This fantastic startup company that offers a simple life hack has already received USD 19 million in seed funding. 9. Prismatic Founded In: 2012 for web browsers and iPhones, 2013 for ipads Founded By: Bradford Cross and Aria Haghighi People can do three main things on Prismatic: Tell the service what topics they are interested in and which people they want to follow; read and look at the suggested articles and photos, and share content on those topics. Before they became mobile app magnates, Cross was a head of research in Flightcaster, and Haghighi was a mathematician who studied natural language programming; they decided to do a news aggregator app startup, and guess what?- They have 25,000 weekly users and $16.5 million in funding now. The secret of the meteoric rise of Prismatic lies in the collaborative environment the company has managed to create for its employees. The engineer responsible work very closely with designers, researchers, and the whole team. Bradford Cross, the founder and the CEO, learned in detail about the intricacies of design so that he could apply it in his startup, and he sure is effective in what he’s doing. However, the company has closed its consumer-facing apps since December 2015 and solely focuses on its machine learning algorithms, which it intends to make available to hedge funds and publishers. 10. Bloomboard Founded In: 2010 Founded By: Eric Dunn and Jason Lange Dunn and Lange were a bunch of teaching specialists. Dunn dedicated an entire decade of his life building adaptive learning management systems while Lange sided with education focused non-profit organization. When they were introduced to each other by a mutual friend, it was like the world was set right for them. They were both searching for a professional development-based solution for teachers as they believed the teacher was the primary driving force for the productivity of children. When they decided to take on the Internet, they were only equipped with their experience and a rough prototype. They were like two hikers on an expedition to the unexplored hills. Bloomboard is a work of art by the duo. It combines technology and the skills of education. Bloomboard offers a “Click to Schedule” option, which saves lengthy paper works while organizing evaluator notes. Because of the quality of its innovation, it was able to attract big giants like Gates Foundation and Birchmere ventures. Bloomboard has managed to secure $5 million in funding.