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Working for a hot startup can be awesome. It typically comes with much cooler amenities than a traditional corporate atmosphere. Some are better than others, obviously, and LinkedIn has released their list of the 50 best startups in 2018.
Your average startup will often provide things like stocked kegerators in the kitchen, an overabundance of snack and food options, free meals throughout the week, and a gym in the office.
All of this might make your working atmosphere better but it’s designed to keep you in the office working harder and longer for the same amount of money. The idea behind all of the cool startup amenities is they want to extract as much as possible from every employee without paying them more.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for working in a startup atmosphere. You generally find yourself working with younger people and it’s typically not stuffy like your average corporate setting. It’s a great way to spend the first portion of your working career if you can land a job at one of America’s top startups.
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Each year, LinkedIn puts out a report of the top 50 startups in America and this year’s list is headlined by Lyft at #1 and the top 25 has several blockchain and crypto-based startups in it.
I’d say that working on the Internet all day every day has enabled me to stay fairly tapped into what new companies are out there in the world disrupting their industries but there are quite a few near the top I don’t recognize the names of.
1. Lyft
2. Halo Top Creamery
3. Coinbase
4. Noodle.ai
5. Bird
6. Robinhood
7. Ripple
8. Glossier
9. Aurora
10. Rubrik
11. Puls
12. TripActions
13. Flexport
14. Ellevest
15. Outreach
16. Samsara
17. Argo AI
18. Root Insurance Company
19. InVision
20. Snowflake Computing
21. Zoox
22. Drift
23. Aha!
24. Affirm
25. Gemini Trust Company
26. ConsenSys
27. Clutch
28. Databricks
29. Allbirds
30. Away
31. BlueVoyant
32. Convoy
33. UnitedMasters
34. Plenty
35. Drive.ai
36. The Wing
37. Solovis
38. Enjoy
39. Bumble
40. Skift
41. Glint
42. Thrive Global
43. Outdoor Voices
44. Cohesity
45. Formation
46. Katerra
47. Axoni
48. Harri
49. Crowd Strike
50. Highspot
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See any names on that list that you’re interested in? You can click here to check out the article on LinkedIn where they’ve got detailed descriptions of each company.
I am somewhat surprised to see so many crypto companies near the top of the list (Coinbase, Gemini, etc) when Bitcoin and other currencies have been slowly bleeding out since the bubble was burst months ago. But there are still plenty of believers out there and A LOT of money backing the industry.
There’s one startup in the top 15 that I won’t call out by name but I’m shocked to see them there.
I had a friend who left the company a few months ago, shortly before there were management shakeups and it sounded like a very strange place to be at the time. I wonder when this list was written, or if all that drama inside the startup was exaggerated, it’s hard to say.