This insider has been tracking stealth startups. Now it’s time to reveal them.

By Peter Salib Peter Salib has been verified by Muck Rack's editorial team
Published on July 22, 2019

With the seemingly ubiquitous pool of VC funding for the tech industry, many startups sprint to prove product-market fit and gain traction.

This is what investors want to see after all –along with many other factors and considerations. A winner can emerge from anywhere and early discovery is key.

Taking modern approaches to things like the way companies conduct customer research and feedback, eating healthy, quick and fresh meals, and urban food delivery, the companies on this list are building software to improve all sorts of different aspects of our lives. 

Here are ten tech startups that you should start watching:

Bestest Polls

Bestest is an addictive mobile app that lets users poll the public, and vote in real time.

Bestest is part of the $42 billion global market research industry. With a growing user base of over 35,000, more than 50,000 polls and 3 million votes have been submitted. People love using this tool over Facebook’s polling feature because you can add rich media, like photo, video, and voice to your poll. 

By making it easy to poll others, and vote, from your smartphone, Bestest’s social polling technology, a free mobile app available on iOS or Android, lets users gather feedback from the public — or a private crowd — in real time.

Although, individuals use this as a convenient tool to get their friends group quick opinion on an impulse sunglasses purchase. Serving different verticals, like clinical trials, Bestest speeds up market research, group decision-making and live audience voting.

Givebox

Givebox combines fintech and fundraising tech into one seamless platform with every tool that nonprofits need.

The acceleration in credit card use has crippled small nonprofits. Givebox combined banking, payment processing, and fundraising technology into one seamless platform and made it free for nonprofits because drastically lowering their technology and banking costs, would be the most effective way to help.

There are no contracts or onboarding expenses which allows this unique fusion to service the 500,000 nonprofits in danger of closing. As one of less than one thousand Payment Facilitators, Givebox is able to maintain and grow the company solely with payment processing fees at rates lower than the 2.9% industry standard with no additional platform fees.

The Givebox automated system enables nonprofits to acquire their own merchant processing and banking account in seconds as opposed to weeks. They can then launch custom fundraisers, events and more on their own website or create a new giving page for the world to see. The platform supports any size nonprofit from large nonprofits with enterprise needs to grassroots nonprofits hoping to grow. Advanced tools like AI risk management and machine-learning fraud monitoring systems are also offered.

RealEats

RealEats makes it fast and convenient for anyone to access and enjoy real food with a novel preparation and packaging format.

Since formally launching in 2018, RealEats has shipped over 290,000 fresh, delicious, nutritious, never processed, chef-prepared meals to a growing base of loyal customers. RealEats makes vacuum-sealed pot-to-plate meals that are ready in 6 minutes and are made from unprocessed, whole, nonGMO, responsibly sourced ingredients. They also stay fresh in the fridge for 7 days, significantly reducing food waste and food costs.

In six minutes, customers can heat, plate and serve an uncompromisingly fresh, delicious meal by cooking the RealEats vacuum-sealed, food-safe pouches in boiling water. RealEats meals cost a lot less than takeout or delivery — and are a whole lot healthier and rewarding! Cooking with vacuum-sealed bags is a simple technique and technology used in top restaurants around the world when they cook via sous-vide. RealEats has pointed it directly towards the consumer to simply how we access and enjoy real food.

SAM.AI

SAM.AI is a voice-activated CRM and marketing outreach platform.

CRMs are data entry heavy and people generally don’t like using them. SAM’s social CRM is the first voice-activated CRM and marketing outreach platform designed to help you get closer to a 5-hour work week. SAM acts as the single source of truth offering profile, affinity, journey, and intent data to improve client engagement and lead conversion.

SAM’s conversational AI executes CRM actions much faster via voice or chat thus eliminating hundreds of sequential clicks and the need to learn complex software. The marketing tools for email, event, social media, content, SEO, and more are all part of the package. The SAM mobile app also comes with a business card scanner for seamless data entry as you go.

Politiscope

Politiscope empowers voters with raw, objective information about their elected officials and the policies they support.

Politiscope’s goal is to establish a more educated and efficient voter base with a multifaceted approach. The Politiscope app strips away the unnecessary complexity of politics to educate the voter population by providing transparent, truthful political information in a centralized location and offer a reliable alternative to biased and fake news.

Within the free app, current topics are highlighted daily and users have the ability to follow bills and politicians that they are interested in as well as bookmark articles and videos on current topics. Politiscope is the first political tool combating fake news and providing users with easy-to-understand bill breakdowns, factual news and politician profiles. Founded by an ex-NFL player, Walter Powell Jr., Politiscope is expanding their offerings by developing two new B2B products that will help politically-driven businesses and organizations fulfill their missions.

Ideacoil

Ideacoil provides a tool and process for soliciting and incentivizing feedback to improve your product.

Market research, mainly customer feedback and engagement, in particular, are essential in iterating better versions. This new model allows brands, small and large, even with zero budget, to collect insightful, focused reviews to help them design better products.

Based on incentives, companies create a feedback campaign and attach a reward or incentive on their services for valuable feedback from their contacts or the Ideacoil community of Feedbackers.

Roxi

Roxi is an on-demand hospitality talent platform for small events and party hosts who want to have an all-inclusive party experience.

If you’ve ever thrown a party for yourself or someone else, after all the planning, you still spend the party day running around and making sure everyone is happy. Roxi is an on-demand talent platform giving hosts the ability to find and book party staff to help them set up, serve food, mix drinks, clean up, and more.

Roxi’s product is an all-in-one service that allows you to hire talent, order food and beverage services, secure venue locations, and invite your guests. Take back your time the day of the party and use Roxi find some extra help.

Redspot

Redspot is building the infrastructure of food delivery hotspots in densely populated urban areas.

In one sentence, it is like the Amazon Lockers for food.

Users can order food and have it delivered to the nearest Redspot hotspot with internet-connected, temperature-controlled food lockers. To consolidate the customer-end of food delivery services, Redspot is deploying conveniently located hotspots in office buildings, residential buildings, and retail spaces of major cities.

Now the delivery drivers don’t have to wait for you to take the elevator 10-stories down to pick up your food in your pajamas– they just pop it in a locker and go.

Highpost

Highpost is an indestructible smart box for shipping anything that might make you nervous.

The shipping industry has seen many innovations but still has a long way to go. Amazon is trying to deliver packages with drones, logistics companies are using blockchain and sensors to track movement with transparency, and all sorts of automation in warehousing and order fulfillment. The cardboard box, the world’s favorite shipping container, is prime for reinvention.

Highpost was born out of a need to securely, and safely and securely ship medical cannabis to patients unable to get to a dispensary. To ship something important and make sure it gets to who and where it needs it to be, Highpost created a tough smart box made of bulletproof material for shipping that has built-in sensors, smart locks, and GPS. The data generated by the smart shipping box is integrated into a customer dashboard system for creating, tracking, and managing shipments.

MyGearVault

MyGearVault is an inventory app for equipment that helps you obtain the proper insurance coverage.

Currently focused on the photographer & videographer market, this intuitive mobile application provides a frictionless process for its users to enter a complete inventory of all their equipment like cameras, lenses, tripods, gimbals, lights, SD cards, and more. You can enter purchase details to store monetary value and serial numbers for identification. Users can protect their sensitive hardware by finding and purchasing the proper insurance coverage for their equipment right through the app.

Launched in 2017, the company boasts 150,000 users and growing with over $200million of equipment cataloged. Keeping track of a growing arsenal of cameras, accessories, and add-ons can be cumbersome. Hundreds of satisfied professionals have obtained insurance through the app using the simple process to discover the right coverage.

Is there a startup not mentioned that we should know about? Let us know in the comments!

By Peter Salib Peter Salib has been verified by Muck Rack's editorial team

Peter Salib is a Tech Columnist at Grit Daily. Based in New Jersey, he is an avid participant of events nationwide who's attended CES in Las Vegas consecutively since 2013. Peter is the host and producer of Show & Tell, a product showcase YouTube channel and also works at Gadget Flow, a leading product discovery platform reaching 31M consumers every month. Peter frequently works with startups on media, content writing, events, and sales. His dog, Scruffy, was a guest product model on the Today Show with Kathy Lee & Hoda in 2018 and was dubbed "Scruffy the Wonder Dog.”

Read more

More GD News