Open Garden

The 10 Hottest Startups in San Francisco

San Francisco is one of the best cities in the world. 47 square miles with surprises around every corner. A place where a car is not needed but be ready for some unexpected hikes up some very steep hills. San Francisco is a magical place and a beautiful city. Spend as much time there as you can, you will not be disappointed. Here are the 10 hottest startups that are making San Francisco proud. 

#10 Lift

Be your best with Lift, an app that helps you put your goals into action. Lift provides everything you need to improve performance in diet, fitness, productivity, and life. Start by setting goals and tracking progress. Get answers to any questions from their community forums. For your most challenging goals, hire an accountability coach for daily feedback.

With Lift, you can...
* Learn yoga and meditation through step-by-step video coaching.
* Test your limits with expert-led fitness challenges and guided workouts.
* Improve your diet through one of ten community diet plans, including the Slow-Carb Diet.
* Build a habit around any goal.
* Hire an accountability coach to get daily support for building your potential.

Unlock your potential at Lift

#9 Chatous

Chatous is a place to meet new people and make new friends. Chatous is a “social discovery platform through conversation.” The site uses a data-driven approach and algorithm to predict which users will be compatible for conversation, and learns about users as they engage in more conversations. Chat with someone completely random or someone who shares your interests.

Start chatting now at Chatous 

#8 Boxbee

Boxbee is the quickest way to send your stuff to storage. Pack your stuff into our durable, plastic boxes and they do the rest. Schedule a delivery anytime. They believe in building amazing experiences that allow people to control their space and belongings in urban settings. Why is this an important problem? People are moving in droves to cities. 60% of the world’s population will be concentrated in a few metro areas by 2020, people are becoming busier and living more transient lives, and dealing with physical stuff is becoming more difficult. 

Fast, efficient, and secure. Boxbee delivers storage on your terms, saving you from the hassles of old–school self–storage.

Start storing at Boxbee

#7 First Opinion

Text a doctor for free, 24/7. Hear back in 5 minutes — moms love it. Ask a doctor all your personal questions through messaging. Download the app, get matched with a doctor and get 24-hour access to them. 

Never again ask, "Do I need a doctor?" If you're ever wondering, the answer is "Yes!" Text a doctor and ask them what they think. Standing by 24-hours a day, their doctors are personal and ready to listen and help.

Text a doctor for free at First Opinion

#6 Open Garden

Share your mobile Internet among all your devices and crowdsource the connectivity of those around you - you are the network. Open Garden leverages crowdsourcing to create seamless connectivity. It enables users to create their own ad-hoc mesh networks with other Open Garden-enabled devices including smartphones, tablets and PCs. 

Open Garden’s technology enables carriers to provide better service to more consumers in more locations, resulting in more satisfied subscribers – and lower churn. Operators can boost their offerings even as they offload traffic from their networks, particularly in urban areas where cellular coverage can be inconsistent. It enables seamless handoffs and simultaneous use of multiple networks, providing the strongest and fastest connection available.

Download at Open Garden

#5 Expect Labs

They are building a technology platform to power a new generation of intelligent voice experiences. Expect Labs has been widely recognized as a leader in the fast-emerging field of anticipatory computing. 


Expect Labs is the creator of the MindMeld app and API. The MindMeld app is the first intelligent assistant that can understand your conversations and find information you need before you have to search for it. The MindMeld API is an advanced developer platform and cloud-based service to power a new generation of anticipatory computing applications. 

Build awesome, intelligent voice interfaces for any app, device, or website at Expect Labs

#4 OneLogin

OneLogin eliminates passwords for companies that embrace cloud computing. Users sign in once and get secure, one-click access to all their web-based apps in the cloud and behind the firewall. OneLogin reduces administrative overhead, increases productivity and drives adoption of apps within the organization. And OneLogin integrates seamlessly with the existing directory infrastructure and adds extra layers of security using password policies, certificates and one-time passwords.

Get secure access for every user, every app and every device at OneLogin

#3 Clever

Making online learning easy for millions of students & teachers. Online learning software in K-12 is one of the fastest growing markets on the planet, and Clever is quickly becoming the infrastructure these apps depend on. 

The Clever technology does two things: 
1) Clever extracts student data from legacy data systems inside of schools. 
2) Clever makes the data available to developers via a modern REST API. 

Today, many of the biggest and most innovative applications in education are powered by Clever, and their platform is just getting started.

Visit their website at Clever

#2 Mixpanel

The most advanced analytics for mobile and web. They help companies dive deep into product usage, conversion rates, and user retention. There are many metrics that measure engagement; page views are not one of them. Make your product better by measuring actions, not page views.

See how it works at Mixpanel

#1 Hampton Creek

Bringing healthier and affordable food to everyone, everywhere. They believe that solving the problem means solving the problem for everybody—not just those who can afford it. Their technology, which is based upon understanding plants from every corner of the planet, enables consumers, food manufactures, and the largest retailers around the world, to offer better, healthier products, at a more affordable cost. They believe that the right thing, for our bodies and for the world, should be affordable. And it should be insanely delicious. That's the only way that change will happen: we have to 10x the food system for everyone, everywhere. 

Whether you're a hip college student or a single mom raising two kids, everyone should be able to eat delicious food that's healthier, sustainable, and affordable.

Visit their website at Hampton Creek

Those are the 10 hottest startups in San Francisco. Our rankings are based on feedback from local founders, entrepreneurs, startup teams and media involved in the local startup community. If you would like to be involved in future San Francisco articles just visit our Survey Page