Sure the latest initiatives from the Teslas, Apples and Googles of the industry tend to dominate the tech news space — and with good reason. Still, the tech titans aren’t the only ones bringing innovation to the sector.
In an effort to highlight up-and-coming companies, Built In launched The Future 5 across seven major U.S. tech hubs. Each quarter, we will feature five tech startups, nonprofits or entrepreneurs in each of these hubs who just might be working on the next big thing. You can check out last quarter’s San Francisco round-up here.
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Known as the technology capital of the U.S., Silicon Valley has been home to tech-savvy innovators for decades. New tools continually arise to serve a wide range of industries. Several unique ventures are building digital solutions for advertising, healthcare, social media and more. Read on to learn more about these up-and-coming San Francisco tech companies recently featured in the Built In Future 5 series.
Built In’s Future 5 Up-and-Coming Bay Area Tech Companies, Q1 2023
- Artifact (Digital Media)
- Omneky (Adtech)
- Shimmer (Wellness)
- Sunnyside (Health)
- True (Social Media)
Artifact strives to keep people connected by preserving stories about someone’s life journey and sharing that story with the rest of their family. The company wants to help families everywhere commemorate important moments, relationships and milestones with digital stories that follow the flow of a person’s life.
Artifact use visual elements like family photos and videos combined with audio recordings of a person talking about their life. The final product is a slideshow that plays while users listen to loved ones or their family members recount details of the person’s life.
To compile the audio files, a network of journalists conducts interviews with users and their families, creating a more natural and comfortable space for conversation while users recount details of their life.
“We provide reflective, really emotional spaces for our families. I think that these spaces are a universal human desire to take stock and talk about what’s important and have a lot of fun doing it,” Ross Chanin, CEO and co-founder of Artifact, told Built In.
In the coming months, Artifact plans to launch another membership offering that will help family members keep track of which stories are already stored on the platform and which tales have yet to be told.
Operating within the rapidly-growing artificial intelligence space, Omneky leverages generative AI to help brands launch ads personalized to their audiences. The company was founded by CEO Hikari Senju as a way to combine technology with human creativity.
“Our mission is to democratize growth and to empower human creativity,” Senju told Built In. “We believe that all humans are sacred and genuinely special and have promise to build great things.”
Omneky’s solution has AI-powered text-to-image capabilities. The platform uses computer vision to gather quantifiable design insights for brands from their imagery. It then generates digital ad content based on which elements will likely engage customers the most.
Brands use Omneky to run their ads across multiple channels like streaming platforms, mobile outlets and similar media. Once an ad launches, Omneky’s tech can analyze its performance and help brands manage their ads.
Down the line, Omneky will expand its tech to work with more mediums in the growing digital media space. Developments in its product pipeline include launching augmented and virtual ads, as well as creating ads that are tailored to individual customers.
Rather than letting someone’s ADHD act as a limiter in their life, Shimmer’s coaching app helps users view their ADHD as a superpower.
The company leverages a strength-based methodology for its coaching track that help users build skills, routines and systems. Shimmer coaches offer users personalized guidance and support and help hold them accountable for reaching their goals. People can use Shimmer to implement a deep working system to help maintain focus or employ tactics to better remember people’s names.
“Most things that are out there for ADHD are always focused on fixing deficiencies and fixing things that are wrong with you,” Christal Wang, Shimmer’s CEO and co-founder, told Built In. “And that’s why we love coaching because it’s not just about that; it’s about reaching your goals. And people with ADHD have certain things that they’re also great at.”
Having served hundreds of members since its launch in October, Shimmer wants to further its growth by expanding into other neurodiverse populations such as those with autism, Wang said. The company also wants to expand education for those outside of the neurodiverse community to create a more welcoming environment for neurodiverse individuals.
The practice of enjoying things in moderation is largely relevant when it comes to consuming alcoholic drinks. For those who drink to the point where their overall wellness is affected yet hasn’t reached a debilitative state, Sunnyside provides an option to help them cut back on alcohol without giving it up entirely.
Sunnyside’s mobile platform helps people build awareness of their consumption as well as make incremental changes to those habits. The platform also helps members maintain their new habits for the long term. Ultimately, members have gotten better sleep, woken up with more energy, reduced their stress and anxiety levels and accelerated their fitness goals, Sunnyside CEO Nick Allen said.
The company’s platform offers a suite of tools that helps users practice mindful drinking. Sunnyside members can also access coaching services where a human coach offers them advice, support or encouragement via text messages.
“At the broad level, we’ve helped more than 140,000 people cut 7,500,000 drinks from their lives over the course of the last couple of years of operating,” Allen told Built In. “So we’ve already had a really major impact in terms of helping people understand where they are and then actually reduce their baseline consumption in a meaningful way.”
Down the line, Sunnyside plans to expand its offering further across the treatment spectrum for alcohol use disorder, or AUD. Whereas it currently focuses on AUD prevention and proactive treatment, the company wants to encompass higher acuity care solutions for those with problematic dependence, Allen said.
Social media sites are used widely today as network-building tools. Users can share content with others within their intimate circles, but that same content can ultimately reach strangers. Holding user privacy at the forefront of its work, True built a social media app that offers a controlled way to share content.
On True, users create feeds called threads that can be set to public or private. Users can add as many people as they want to these threads and control who gets to come in and out of them.
True focuses on people users actually know, and the app allows them to share content safely within the platform, according to True’s founder and CEO Bret Cox. Once someone shares something on True, that same content can’t be shared on other social platforms, he said.
Additionally, True can show users relevant ads without selling their personal information by leveraging keyword advertising within its threads.
“[Social media] is no longer about the social graph or connecting with a friend or a family. It’s about [keeping] your attention … because that’s how [those companies] make money,” Cox told Built In. “The longer that you are addicted to that platform, the more ads they can show you. So it’s just a loop that recurs. We want to be part of the conversation as a healthy replacement.”
As it grows, True will double down on its privacy features, as well as launch a product called Days which will allow users to engage with one another on collaborative mobile stories.
