Phoenix, Arizona, is known as Silicon Desert due to the growing number of tech startups in the area. Here is a list of the top 11 Phoenix companies and startups that are exciting to Startup Hustle’s team and to startup investors.
One of the few areas in the US with a desert environment, Phoenix is a haven for retirees looking for a warm and dry place to live and play. It boasts numerous museums, parks, desert preserves, restaurants, and resorts. The city has over 200 golf courses and is home to the Phoenix Open.
The cost of living in Phoenix is a bit higher (103.7) than the US average. However, it is still more affordable than San Francisco (269.3), New York (187.2), or Salt Lake City (118.9). That makes Phoenix an excellent place to live for anyone on a fixed income.
Phoenix goes by many names, including Valley of the Sun, Arizona's Urban Heart, and just lately, Silicon Desert. The reason for the last one is its pro-business policies for Phoenix companies.
The efforts of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council to attract businesses are paying dividends. Low operational costs are motivating companies such as Intel, Motorola, and Uber to step up growth in the area. Amazon also has plans to expand its Phoenix Tech Hub operations, potentially creating hundreds of new jobs.
Tech startups have come into some love too. For example, the #yesphx community connects movers and shakers in the startup space. Another one is the StartupAZ Foundation, which helps innovative entrepreneurs.
A significant driver in this interest around Phoenix is its data center environment. Inexpensive power, low natural disaster risk, and ideal location helped make it the fifth largest data center market in the US. Since tech companies rely on stable and cost-effective data management, they get a running start in connectivity in Phoenix.
Listen to the Podcast Episode about Phoenix's Top Startups
As of this writing, Crunchbase identifies 374 companies founded in Phoenix from 2017 to 2022, 106 of which are tech-related. Learn about the 11 Phoenix companies and top startups included in that list that caught our eye.
Top Phoenix Startups to Watch in 2022
It can be incredibly difficult to find skilled workers in the construction industry. HardHats takes a shot at making that challenge a bit easier for Phoenix companies.
HardHats is a SaaS application and marketplace for contractors, workers, and available crews. As a result, contractors and construction crews can now offer their skills to those who need them and vice versa. HardHats takes core issues around recruiting and the labor shortage, offering contractors an easy solution to find talent.
They provide an on-demand recruiting platform connecting construction workers, professionals, and crews to contractors. The service handles pre-interviewing, marketing, and advertising for $699 for two weeks. The technology allows contractors and construction crews to share skills when they experience downtime or any delay.
The goal is to reduce downtime on construction projects and improve matchmaking for construction workers and contractors. It is ideal for builders with no recruiting support.
It works much like any job board but is exclusive to the construction industry. Contractors sign up on the Companies tab and post a job on the app. On the other hand, construction workers and professionals sign up on the Workers tab and fill in their information.
A HardHats team member will then coordinate the job matching with contractors and available workers and crews within 24 hours. Contractors get a list of qualified candidates for consideration.
Founded in 2019, HardHats is a women-founded startup with CEO Kassidy Hazelton at the helm. Her family holds 70 years of recruiting, construction, and technology experience combined. The company raised $55,000 in Pre-Seed funding on October 21, 2019.
Kassidy Hazelton
CEO, HardHats
Startup Hustle spoke with Kassidy Hazelton about "Labor Shortage Answers." Listen to the episode here or read the highlights here.
There will be about 57.55 million smart homes in the US in 2022. They all depend on smart home technology to run on some level. HomeKey Systems provides the means to keep homeowners in the know.
HomeKey is a home-technology company that gives homeowners simple and easy access to their home’s details. It tracks maintenance and future home improvements, creating an irrefutable history. Additionally, it uses the information to develop a comprehensive home care plan that eliminates the guesswork and puts maintenance on autopilot.
Users can access any necessary information whenever and wherever they need it. It tracks more than 280 items about the home, from builder contracts and warranties to curated parts and products.
If the homeowner sells the home, the data stays with the house, sans personal information about the owner. The app retains a complete inventory of the home’s contents and history of home improvements to pass on to the next owner. HomeKey is available to select, new home communities.
HomeKey Systems operates under the eagle eye of co-founders Shane Ettestad as CEO and James Carr as CPO. Since its founding in 2018, it has received $1.8 million in funding. The latest funding was a Convertible Note round on February 1, 2022.
Shane Ettestad
CEO & Co-founder, HomeKey Systems
Startup Hustle spoke with Shane Ettestad about "Smart Home Tech Startups." Listen to the episode here or skip to highlights here.
When you hear "synucleinopathy," there is no real comprehension of its significance. However, the light bulb goes on when you understand that it includes disorders such as Parkinson's disease and dementia. The World Health Organization revealed 8.5 million people had Parkinson's disease in 2019. As with most conditions, early diagnosis typically improves the overall outcome.
CND Life Sciences provides an accurate, evidence-based tool to confirm the diagnosis of Parkinson's disease and other synucleinopathies. It developed and launched the Syn-One Test to quantify the abnormal accumulation of alpha-synuclein proteins in skin nerve fibers.
The test is commercially available to Phoenix companies and serves to confirm synucleinopathy in patients. Therefore, it diagnoses suspected Parkinson's disease (PD), dementia with Lewy body (DLB), multiple system atrophy (MSA), or pure autonomic failure (PAF). CND continues to collaborate with numerous biopharmaceutical companies to advance research in the field.
The biotechnology company is in the capable hands of CEO Rick Morello and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Todd D. Levine. CND Life Sciences successfully raised $9.8 million in three funding rounds from four investors since its founding in 2017. The latest funding was a Grant round on May 18, 2022.
Think about how often you've returned something you purchased. Multiply that by 2 billion online buyers in 2020, which is only about a quarter of retail buyers worldwide. Now, that's a lot of returned items likely on their way to landfills! Hammoq stepped in to turn this trash into treasure.
Hammoq is a SaaS platform developed for the secondhand reCommerce industry. The app drives reCommerce across dozens of marketplaces using years of resale industry knowledge.
The company provides reCommerce sellers with an artificial intelligence-based app and listing solution that automates their business. It enables the reselling of returned items, lost SKUs, overstocks, and secondhand products.
The tech platform uses machine vision to significantly reduce the time and labor needed to get merchandise online. The all-in-one solution includes personal listing assistants and SEO capabilities for one monthly fee. It does the grunt work so that reCommerce sellers can maximize their profits.
Hammoq operates with co-founders Ty Blunt and Siddharth Lunawat at the helm. Since its founding, the company has raised $9 million in three funding rounds from four investors. Its latest funding was a Seed round on June 7, 2022.
Most people tend to shy away from anything that reminds them of mortality, such as wills and estate planning. They also believe that estate planning is only for the rich, which is simply not true. What is true is that failing to do estate planning can put devastating financial and emotional stress on heirs. Wealth can help you maintain control over what happens to your assets.
As the first of its kind, Wealth is a comprehensive estate planning platform that enables members to create their estate plans. It has an integrated ecosystem of proprietary legal documents, third-party APIs, and a bank-level-encrypted digital vault.
The platform collects and stores financial information securely in one place so users can access it anytime. It provides users with what they need to create, manage, and visualize their estate plans without leaving their homes. Even more, it alerts users and guides them to keep estate plans current and valid.
Perhaps the most critical aspect of Wealth is its ease of use. When you join the platform and set up your profile, you will answer personal and financial questions. These will enable Wealth to determine the types of documents you need.
You can use the Dashboard to add information such as assets to create digital copies of important papers. All of that information is now available in one place. You can authorize beneficiaries to grant them emergency access when the time comes.
Employers can offer Wealth as an employee benefit, providing their team with financial wellness opportunities. Since its founding in 2021, Wealth has been under the management of CEO Rafael Loureiro and CTO Peter Shirley. It earned $16 million in a Seed round from two investors on March 22, 2022.
Healthcare spending is on the rise. In the US alone, the bill came to $4.124 billion in 2020, 73% of which went to hospitals and healthcare professionals. The challenge is processing patient payments for Phoenix companies and globally. Fortunately, Rivia Health provides an efficient way for patients and healthcare staff to manage payments.
Rivia Health is a communication and payment platform to help healthcare provider organizations get more payments while doing less. It integrates with the existing practice management or revenue cycle management (RCM) system, automating billing workflows. These workflows include appointment and billing reminders, copay or pre-service payments, and payment plan setups.
The platform relieves hospital or clinic staff by automating manual tasks regarding outstanding patient bills. Rivia Health makes it easier for patients to pay by providing timely reminders and multiple payment methods. Consequently, Rivia increases the rate of patient payment for health organizations on its second day on the platform.
Founded in 2018, Rivia Health remains in the capable hands of co-founder and CEO Rachel Mertensmeyer. With the help of CTO Matt Spradley, Rivia Health has received $3.9 million in four funding rounds. Its latest funding was a seed round on January 1, 2021.
Mangata Networks is a satellite data service provider aiming to promote accessible B2G and B2B connectivity. It is developing a patented architecture to connect micro data centers using satellites for hosting cloud services.
The plan is to create an infrastructure using highly elliptical orbit (HEO) and medium earth orbit (MEO) satellite constellations. Thus, the infrastructure will connect to a system of 5000 micro data centers. Together, they extend connectivity directly into localized 5G, IoT, and Wi-Fi networks globally.
The network infrastructure is a work in progress, with beta testing of community networks scheduled for 2023. The idea is for users to evaluate the network before launching the first satellites to iron out any kinks. Trial networks will be in South Korea, Seattle, and Scotland.
Mangata Networks is under the leadership of co-founders Brian Holz and Bob Morris as CEO and CTO, respectively. The service provider acquired $33 million in a Series A round from six investors on January 11, 2022.
Battle Approved Motors (BAM) is an early-stage startup developing electric vehicle technology for work and performance-based side-by-side vehicles. The idea is to improve the utility terrain vehicle (UTV) market by making it greener, safer, and more economical. It uses modern technology to break out of the traditional UTV mold.
Conceived initially as a turnkey off-road racing platform, the company is also developing UTVs for the consumer market. The goal is to create a completely electric off-road vehicle that drives on the roughest terrains with race-level security and safety. This Phoenix startup company is developing the zero footprint BAM e103 freestyle UTV.
BAM is under the leadership of founder and CEO Christopher James. The startup raised $1.2 million in a Seed round from three investors on March 24, 2022.
The US has the most number of closed-circuit TV cameras (CCTVs) worldwide at 15.28 cameras per 100 people. While most are there for security, all of these CCTVs may, in fact, be used more proactively in retail stores and healthcare institutions. RadiusAI is banking on artificial intelligence to add value to existing surveillance tools in these settings for Phoenix companies.
RadiusAI is an AI-based technology platform focusing on human-centric advanced analytics in the retail and healthcare sectors. Its patented Viztel™ artificial intelligence technology uses existing vision capturing devices to provide rich data streams to produce actionable insights.
The platform improves operational efficiency by monitoring the real-time journeys of people within a facility and interpreting their actions. You can identify where your bottlenecks are, what people are doing, and how they are doing it in real-time. Thus, RadiusAI helps identify missed opportunities and ways to fix them.
Co-founders Jeff Cox and Abhinav Chowdary are active at RadiusAI as Executive Chairman and CTO, respectively. They have raised $7.1 million in three funding rounds since its founding in 2017, with the latest round on January 1, 2020.
No one likes to live in cookie-cutter homes, but standardizing them makes them more affordable. And Mosaic helps give you the best of both worlds.
Mosaic is an integrated platform operating as a digital general contractor for Phoenix companies. The construction technology software improves the scalability of residential construction by standardizing the construction process, not the houses.
Homebuilders and residential developers can use the platform to offload their construction processes and make them more efficient. Thus, it allows Phoenix companies to deliver homes people love and create better communities at a price they can afford.
The technology platform supports all operations, including home design, construction scheduling, cost tracking, workforce tasking, and billing. Mosaic focuses on production-scale projects of all types, from single-family homes to build-to-rent housing.
Co-founders Salman Ahmad and Sep Kamvar believe that a software approach is a key to achieving construction efficiencies at scale. The right software can also diversify the types of houses and the methods used to build them. Using a single platform for all processes also makes it easier to manage and control data flows and create reports for decision-making.
A platform to make residential homebuilding more cost-effective is clearly ringing many bells. Mosaic has acquired $68.8 million in three funding rounds from 18 investors since its founding in 2017. The latest funding was a Series B round on November 1, 2021.
A list of Phoenix companies would not be complete without a nod to the burgeoning world of the crypto ecosystem. Rumble Kong League (RKL) aims to be a one-stop shop for everything Web3.
RKL is the first gaming title of Rumble League studios, a development platform for online games. It combines traditional gaming elements, basketball, fashion, web3 functionality, asset ownership, and collectible NFTs to create an engaging sports-game ecosystem.
Considered "The Metaverse's Major Sports League," RKL is a play-to-earn web and mobile game currently under development. Announced in 2021, RKL is the first to bring basketball, play-to-earn, fashion, and collectible NFTs under one umbrella. It has deep partnerships with brands such as IDEO CoLab, JDS Crypto, Animoca Brands, CAA Sports, and Framework Ventures.
RKL is distinct from other NFTs by providing more experiences for NFT holders. RKL players can compete in tournaments for cryptocurrency. They can also own and manage teams, buy fashion collectibles for their Kongs, and train them to level up. Additionally, they can breed Kongs and create new NFTs. However, the RKL game itself is not yet available.
Rumble League Studios co-founders Marcus Bläsche and Nick Vale act as CEO and COO, respectively, to launch RKL in 2022. The tech startup has since raised $4.5 million in one Seed round from 10 investors on December 14, 2021.
Phoenix Startups Rise from the Haboob
Phoenix may be ideal for retirees on a fixed income, but it also has plenty to offer entrepreneurs out to make a killing. That said, Phoenix has a ways to go to truly earn the name Silicon Desert compared to other tech hubs. However, it is well on its way if these 11 tech startups are anything to go by.
If you would like to read more about top startups in other cities, check out our list here!
At Startup Hustle, we think of innovative startups as a haboob, but instead of sand, they cover the landscape with fresh ideas. We are always ready to plunge into the unknown regarding tech startups and companies. If you’re a hustler in the entrepreneurial space, hit us up on Startup Hustle so we can learn more about you and your growing company!
