Next Tech Titan: MotherDuck, Rec Room, Statsig, Submittable, Zuper vie for pivotal GeekWire Award

MotherDuck, Rec Room, Statsig, Submittable, and Zuper compete for the prestigious GeekWire Award, vying for recognition as the next tech titan. These companies showcase innovation and potential for significant impact, reflecting the vibrant and competitive landscape of the technology industry.

Smartsheet CEO Mark Mader accepts the Next Tech Titan award at the GeekWire Awards in 2016. Eight years later, Smartsheet is a publicly traded company valued at more than $5 billion, recently surpassing $1 billion in annualized recurring revenue. (GeekWire File Photo / Kevin Lisota)

Which company will be the next tech titan to emerge from the Pacific Northwest?

GeekWire’s startup coverage seeks to answer this fundamental question every day, at least implicitly. But once a year, we formalize the process through the Next Tech Titan category in the GeekWire Awards, our annual event recognizing the top innovators and companies in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest.

Continue reading for details on each finalist, and a sampling of past Next Tech Titan winners as evidence of the predictive capabilities of this award.

Vote here or below in this GeekWire Awards category, which is presented by Baird.

And the finalists for Next Tech Titan are …

MotherDuck, a serverless data analytics platform built on the open-source platform DuckDB, an in-process online analytical processing database, or OLAP. Its technology makes it simpler for businesses to run analytics on their data, rather than relying on more expensive services from large cloud vendors. The company in 2023 announced a $52.5 million funding round, bringing total funding to date to $100 million.

Rec Room, the virtual reality community and gaming platform, a mainstay of VR and mixed reality platforms including the Meta Quest and, more recently, the Apple Vision Pro. The company, founded in 2016, touts more than 82 million lifetime users. last big funding round was in 2021, when it raised $145 million at a valuation of $3.5 billion.

Statsig, a feature management and experimentation platform founded in 2021 by Vijaye Raji, who previously led Facebook’s Seattle engineering office. The company’s revenue increased more than three-fold in the last year, helping to reduce its burn rate, and significantly increasing its cash runway. Statsig raised $43 million in 2022 from Sequoia Capital, with participation from Madrona Venture Group. The company’s total funding to date is $53 million.

Submittable, a social impact platform that helps corporations, governments, and nonprofits manage programs focused on social good. The company raised $47 million in venture capital in 2022, in its most recent funding round. Submittable’s CEO, Seattle-area tech veteran Thor Culverhouse, joined the company in 2020.

Zuper, a Seattle-based startup that provides field operations software to help companies manage workers across various industries, including cleaning, maintenance, and landscaping. Zuper’s technology lets companies schedule appointments, dispatch workers, track their jobs, and handle customer interactions smoothly. The company in December announced a $32 million Series B round led by FUSE.

Which one will prevail? Help determine the winner by voting here or below. We’ll announce the winner in this category and all the others, live on stage at the GeekWire Awards at the Showbox SoDo in Seattle on Thursday, May 9.

Past winners in this category have lived up to the billing. Among them:

• Data visualization company Tableau Software (the 2012 winner), acquired by Salesforce for $15.7 billion in 2019;
• Sales tax tech company Avalara (2014), taken private in 2022 for $8.4 billion;
• Work management tech company Smartsheet (2016), now worth more than $5 billion as a publicly traded company;
• Pet-sitting company Rover (2019), taken private last month for $2.3 billion.

Yes, the ultimate outcomes were different for the likes of trucking tech company Convoy (the 2018 winner), and e-commerce company Zulily (2013), but the years following the recognition brought meteoric growth for them, as well.

Last year’s Next Tech Titan was Flexe, the warehousing infrastructure startup.

The GeekWire Awards recognize the top innovators and companies in Pacific Northwest technology. Finalists in this category and others were selected based on community nominations, along with input from GeekWire Awards judges. Community voting across all categories will continue until April 12, combined with feedback from judges to determine the winner in each category.

We’ll announce the winners live on stage at Showbox SoDo in Seattle on May 9. There are a limited number of table sponsorships available to attend the event. Learn more and sign up to attend on the GeekWire Awards event site.

If interested in sponsoring a category or purchasing a table sponsorship for the event, contact us at events@geekwire.com.

Special thanks to Astound Business Solutions, the presenting sponsor of the 2024 GeekWire Awards.

Sourced from GeekWire‍