Top Design Startups in 2027

Pendo helps people adopt software more quickly and successfully. Pendo customers include the world’s leading software companies and digital enterprises, including Verizon, RE/MAX, LabCorp, OpenTable, Okta, Salesforce, and Zendesk. Founded in 2013 in the heart of Raleigh, North Carolina, Pendo is backed by Battery Ventures, Spark Capital, Meritech Capital and Sapphire Ventures. Through its ProductCraft and customer communities, sponsored events and podcast, Pendo aims to support the success of product and digital leaders everywhere. For more information, visit: pendo.io

Every child in the world will grow up with Mickey Mouse and Padlet. That's our vision. We are making the default way of collecting and sharing thoughts on the Internet. Our members love the software. We have over 50 million active users making Padlet one of the most used apps on the planet. Our goal is to be THE the most used app on the planet. We are venture backed AND profitable. We are 35 people (plus a baby crane that we've adopted but it doesn't really do much). That's 2 million active users per employee. Some really badass people work here.

Productboard is a customer-centric product management platform that helps organizations get the right products to market, faster. Over 5,400 companies, including Microsoft, Zoom, 1-800-Contacts, and UiPath, use Productboard to understand what users need, prioritize what to build next, and rally everyone around their roadmap. With offices in San Francisco, Prague, and Vancouver, Productboard is backed by leading investors like Dragoneer Investment Group, Tiger Global Management, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Credo Ventures. Learn more at productboard.com.

At Joy, we believe software can help organize and bring people together in the real world. Digital tools can (and should) bring people closer together—online and offline. Joy fosters real relationships and real communication, helping people organize, share, and remember their important life events. We are building a virtual event planner that aims to help people plan events both large and small. From a concert or a school reunion to a destination wedding on a tropical island. We are starting with one of the biggest life events - the wedding.

Storetasker is the leading talent platform for Consumer Brands - changing how brands hire exceptional freelancers and agencies across development, design, marketing, finance, and operations. The platform has supported thousands of fractional hires for brands like Alo Yoga, Dermalogica, SoundCloud, DraftKings, Verve Coffee, and many more. Our matching agent sources from a highly vetted network, delivers warm introductions to the right specialists, and streamlines fractional hiring end to end. We empower entrepreneurs to bring their ideas to life by finding the right fractional teammates, and we help craft the future of work for a global community of insanely talented freelancers and agencies. To date, we've raised $4.3M from top investors, including Flybridge, Founder Collective, Techstars, and HubSpot Ventures.

Sofar Sounds was founded from a rooftop concert in 2009 hosted by Rafe Offer. He had eight people come over and listen to musician, Dave Alexander, play. This hobby and desire for more personal performances founded Sofar Sounds. Sofar Sounds is about allowing people the opportunity to go to thoughtfully picked out performances in small venues in order to give people a more personal live experience. We connect thousands of artists and hosts to people who sign up. We are set up in 444 cities. Signing up is free, then you get emails inviting you to performances and from there you can buy tickets for the ones you wish you attend.

We are an e-commerce company based in New York City focusing on design-driven online and printed stationery, including greetings, invitations, birth announcements, wedding suites, and custom stationery. Some of our partners include leading fashion designers Kate Spade New York, Kelly Wearstler, and Oscar de la Renta. Millions of people use our elegant technologies and expressive designs to celebrate their most important life occasions.

Founded in 2009, contentsquare is a digital experience insights platform that helps businesses understand how and why users are interacting with their app, mobile and web sites. we compute billions of touch and mouse movements, and transform this knowledge into profitable actions that increase engagement, reduce operational costs and maximize conversion rates. using behavioral data, artificial intelligence and big data to provide automatic recommendations, contentsquare empowers every member of the digital team to easily measure the impact of their actions, and make fast and productive data-driven decisions to optimize the customer journey.

Fellow wants to help people easily brew ridiculously good coffee and tea at home. Our first product, the Duo Coffee Steeper, is a dual chamber french press with a two-stage filter. The value prop seems to be appealing as Duo is now over $200,000 in pre-sales. Right now we're working on a portfolio of complementary products that will fast follow behind the launch of Duo in February.

Innovify is a fast growing digital innovation & transformation company with headquarters in London. Offering a wide range of expertise, Innovify helps clients to develop innovative products that enable them to focus on key business drivers using a collaborative work model that functions on an Agile & Lean philosophy. Innovify has become a trusted partner to its clients by going beyond the typical scope of application development through a range of digital products such as websites, apps, and software. Innovify is the next stage in transforming your ideas into highly scalable businesses based on our innovative ideology: Ideate: Put life into your idea. Incubate: Execute your idea the right way. Accelerate: Soar to the highest peak of success. Innovify is the right partner for your digital ambitions.