17 Cool New Startups That Will Change Your Life

Discover the household names of tomorrow, today.

1. Brewbot

brewbot.io

What they do: "The world's smartest personal brewery," Brewbot lets you brew beer that is cheap, delicious, and easy to make in the comfort of your own home... all with the help of your phone.

Background: Brewbot was created by Cargo, a group of designers and developers from Northern Ireland. They raised the original £114,368 to fund the project through a Kickstarter campaign.

2. Leap Motion

leapmotion.com

What they do: Remember the cool way Tom Cruise operated computers with his hands in Minority Report? Leap Motion brings you that technology thanks to a controller that lets you manipulate your home computer with a wave of the hand.

Background: Leap Motion is a San Francisco based company founded in 2010 by Michael Buckwald and David Holz.

3. Brode

brode.co

What it does: Brode makes a remarkable, all-natural electrolyte vitamin that seriously reduces hangovers, jetlag, and athletic fatigue.

Background: Brode was founded in 2010 by former New York University student Marc Brodeur.

4. Shyp

shyp.com

What they do: Have something you want to ship? Simply snap a photo of it with your smart phone and Shyp will pick it up, pack it, and send it off at the lowest cost possible.

Background: Shyp was founded in San Francisco in 2013. They recently raised 10 million dollars to launch in New York this fall.

5. Common Form

common-form.com

What they do: Common Form allows you to file a 1040EZ (the "easy form" for people with the simplest tax returns) in as little as five minutes by taking a photo of your W2 and texting it to them.

Background: The San Diego based Common Form was one of just eleven companies selected out of 1,500 applicants to participate in Techstars' startup accelerator program.

6. Wanderable

wanderable.com

What they do: Wanderable lets you create a registry to fund your honeymoon, so your guests and friends can send you somewhere you want to go instead of buying you napkin holders and other stuff you don't really need.

Background: Founded in 2012 by former Stanford University classmates, Jenny Chen and Marcela Miyazawa, Wanderable was selected to participate in Dave McClure’s prestigious 500 Startups Accelerator program.

7. Humin

humin.com

What they do: Humin makes an app that organizes your contacts "in the way that you naturally think." A cool example of this is when you've forgotten someone's name. Instead of scrolling though your contacts and hoping a name rings a bell, Hunin lets you search for the person using terms like "Met last week."

Background: Humin was founded in 2012. They first released the app as a private beta in January to 20,000 people from around the world including celebrities Will.i.am and Richard Branson.

8. Organovo

organovo.com

What they do: Organovo is like something out of a science fiction movie. It specializes in 3D bioprinting, which means they make functional human tissue which can be used for scientific testing, and, in the future, surgery and transplantation.

Background: Organova formally incorporated in Delaware in 2007. It went public in 2012.

9. Glow

glowing.com

What they do: Glow makes an app that aims to help women get pregnant without fertility treatments. The coolest thing about Glow, though, is that if a couple fails to get pregnant after ten months of using the app, they will be eligible to receive crowdsourced funding toward fertility treatments.

Background: Glow started in 2013 as part of HVF, an umbrella project for the data-driven concepts of PayPal founder Max Levchin.

10. ThinkUp

thinkup.com

What they do: ThinkUp bills itself as "analytics for humans," and provides its users fun and surprising information about their social media life.

Background: ThinkUp was founded in New York by Gina Trapani and Anil Dash. The company's launch was crowdfunded in August, 2013.

11. Clef

getclef.com

What they do: Clef aims to do away with passwords and the security risks they pose with an app that enables people to use their smart phone to login.

Background: The Bay Area based Clef was started by three Pomona College graduates who unveiled their app to the world in December, 2013.

12. Dash

dash.by

What they do: Dash connects your car to your smart phone, and in the process diagnoses safety issues, tells you how to drive more economically, and even compares your driving to that of your friends.

Background: Co-founded in New York by Jamyn Edis and Brian Langel in 2012, Dash counts Foursquare cofounder Dennis Crowley among its investors.

13. LIFX

youtube.com

What they do: LIFX is a wifi-enabled "smart lightbulb." These lightbulbs last 27 years and — among other things — can change color and be programmed to come on at different times using your smartphone.

Background: In 2012 LIFX raised $1.3m on Kickstarter in just six days.

14. HopSkipDrive

hopskipdrive.com

What they do: Like an Uber for parents, HopSkipDrive is a ride-sharing service that will safely get kids where they need to go when their parents can't drive them.

Background: HopSkipDrive was founded by three working moms — Joanna McFarland, Carolyn Yashari Becher, and Janelle Mcglothlin — and is about to launch a beta in Los Angeles with hopes of going national in the next three years.

15. Nest

nest.com

What they do: Nest makes a next generation thermostat that can lower your energy spending by up to 20%. It also has an app that allows you to change the temperature at home remotely.

Background: Nest started with just 16 people in a Palo Alto garage in May 2010.

16. Fitmob

youtube.com

What they do: Fitmob aims to revolutionize the fitness gym model — which they say is broken — by allowing you to use their app or website to find affordable workouts that happen both indoors and outdoors.

Background: Co-founded by Snapfish CEO Raj Kapoor, Fitmob received $9.75 million in equity and debt funding earlier this year.

17. Exo

exoprotein.com

What they do: Exo's protein bars are made with cricket flour — that's right, insects. It may sound unappetizing to Western eaters, but crickets are incredibly nutritious and more sustainable than other forms of protein, such as cattle that produce 80 times more methane.

Background: Exo was started by two Brown University students in 2013 and initially funded through a successful Kickstarter campaign.