Top User Experience Design Startups in 2026

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

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.

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.

Since 2002, we’ve had over 1.2 million enrollments and helped people fast-track their careers and make a meaningful difference, while supporting millions more through open-source content. We collaborate with over 250 leading designers from Google, NASA, Harvard, and Adobe to make world-class learning accessible. We are a fully remote company, bringing together exceptional talent from across the globe. Read more about our values, company culture and open positions: ixdf.org/about

Did you know… only a third of product teams actually do *continuous* product research? A lack of time, tools, and resources often mean that valuable user insights are left in the dark. With Maze, you can shine a light on what your users really want and make more strategic product decisions. Maze is a product research platform dedicated to making life easier for modern product teams. With versatile features—from prototype testing, to video and screen recordings of usability sessions—Maze empowers over 60,000 brands, from Samsung to Braze, to learn about their audiences and act fast. With easy one-click integrations to some of the world’s leading design platforms, Maze makes it easier than ever to test designs, ideas, and prototypes. Import prototypes seamlessly to Figma, Adobe XD, InVision, Marvel, and Sketch to help round up feedback and move ideas in the right direction. As well as being accessible across multiple devices, mazes can be shared with users across the globe in just a matter of clicks. A simple URL is all that’s needed to gather user insights in a matter of hours. Once the results roll in, Maze does the work for you with automated analytics that display responses in visually digestible reports. As well as looking beautiful, a Maze Report can be shared easily with major stakeholders for further discussion and ideations. With the Comments feature, customizing your reports with summaries and follow-up actions has never been simpler. With flexible plans built to accompany your product research goals, Maze is designed to empower you—whether you’re a team of one or 100. And if you’re still not sure where to begin with your product research, Maze’s curated gallery of [Templates](maze.co/templates/product) will steer you in the right direction.

Great Question is the all-in-one platform for customer research. Founded by seasoned entrepreneurs, loved by customers, backed by Y Combinator.

When’s the last time you completed an online form that was fun? Audiences love Typeform because it’s intuitive, incredibly engaging, and dare we say, enjoyable to interact with. Because of this, Typeform gets completion rates up to 4x higher than regular old forms. This makes data collection a breeze for entrepreneurs, researchers, educators, event planners, and anyone interested in getting closer to their audience. What’s the future of online data collection? Will it be voice? How will machine learning play a role? Is there a place for augmented reality? What about holographic technology? At Typeform, these are some of the questions we’re grappling with. Why? Because we want to be the best at conversational data collection. That means lots of experimentation. And it means working on problems that don’t exist—yet. Typeform is leading the future of conversational data collection. Shape the industry with us—and help make the web a little more human.

As founders and operators backed by Pear VC and Y-Combinator, we understand entrepreneurs' challenges when finding the right talent and resources to scale up their vision. We believe any startup with the proper guidance and support can significantly accelerate its trajectory. At Nen Creative, we mirror the entrepreneurial spirit of our partners. We operate with passion, dedication, and scrappiness to ensure clients reach their full potential. Our partners and clients span top venture firms like a16z, Mantis VC (the Chainsmokers), Voyager, and Pear VC, as well as top startups and institutions like Hearth AI, The University of Pittsburgh, Opkit, Wildr, Utopia Labs, Worca, and more.

Substrakt creates websites and web applications for cultural organisations. The types of organisations we work with include theatres, performing arts centres, music venues, museums, galleries, and performance groups in Europe and North America. We work with some of the most exciting and interesting cultural organisations in the world including Shakespeare’s Globe, the National Theatre, Sadler’s Wells, Santa Fe Opera, Royal Court Theatre, Bridge Theatre, and Royal Academy of Arts amongst many others. We also provide consultancy services and training on analytics, digital strategy, ticketing, project management and digital community events.

MoodMe is an innovative B2B tech leader on a mission to revolutionize the way businesses engage and gain insights through AIaaS and enterprise agreements. By leveraging the power of Face AI technologies, we create experiences that are not just engaging but profoundly insightful, providing a window into the hearts and minds of the target audience. Our vision is to set the standard in empathetic engagement, where user-centric experiences boost customer satisfaction, foster loyalty, and drive outstanding performance across diverse industries. At our core, we are dedicated to uniting innovation and ethics to craft an AI landscape that is unbiased and empathetic, ultimately making a powerful positive impact on a global scale. And this is only the beginning!