Santa Cruz is ripe with new startups and “mature” startups. When is a startup no longer a startup? Alex Wilhelm of TechCrunch created the 50-100-500 rule which states you can no longer be defined as a startup if you have a revenue which exceeds $50 million, have 100 or more employees and have a value of $500 million or more. We believe all of the companies listed below have the potential to exceed $50M revenue in the very near future. Which are you keeping an eye on? Also, save the date to see 6 startups presenting at the Santa Cruz Works New Tech on February 2, 2022. Tickets on sale on January 17, 2022.

Ambient Photonics

Focus: Breakthrough energy harvesting technology unlocking limitless possibilities for self-powered connected devices.

2021 Results:

Entered into a strategic partnership with Universal Electronics, Inc. (NASDAQ: UEIC) to bring Ambient Photonics energy harvesting technology to the Smart Home ecosystem. UEI produces over 120 million remote controls a year and is a global leader in other key Smart Home devices. (https://ambientphotonics.com/ambient-photonics-and-universal-electronics-inc-partnership)
Successfully concluded a Part I application to the US Department of Energy for a proposed $162M loan facility and was selected to invite a Part II application. This selection indicates that Ambient has passed the technical qualification, demonstrating the potential to offset greenhouse gas emissions and create hundreds of jobs for U.S. workers. (https://ambientphotonics.com/ambient-invited-to-phase-2-of-162m-doe-loan-program)
Our customer Universal Electronics announced that they will show their new ETERNA remotes featuring Ambient technology at CES 2022 in Las Vegas, Nevada (https://www.uei.com/news/ces-2022-press-announcement)

2022 Goals: Break ground on California manufacturing facility and corporate HQ. Begin commercial operations of new high volume, automated production system.

Climatize

Focus: Climatize is taking the thinking out of climate action by making every transaction an investment in climate action.

2021 Milestones: This year was full of change. In July we relocated the company from Europe to launch our new headquarters in downtown Santa Cruz. Since then we have rebuilt our pipeline of renewable energy projects with 8 different project developers including local companies such as Mynt & national firms such as Blocpower which represents >$100M worth of clean energy projects. To accelerate product launch Climatize received a grant from the New York State Energy Research & Development Agency & was selected for pro bono legal representation by Morrison & Foerster LLP.

2022 Goals: Our app will bring climate investing to everyone starting in Q2 2022. Before then we will be raising a $500,000 round to help us receive approval from the Financial Regulatory Authority. Once this approval is granted, Climatize will start funding the design & construction of our first clean energy projects in Santa Cruz County.

Cruz Foam

Focus: Cruz Foam is supplying the world with eco-friendly packaging.

2021 Milestones: Raised largest (to date) seed round ($2.750m) and $1.7m NSF grants, developed several “proof-of-concept” programs with Fortune 100 companies, setup large scale production/R&D facility at Ingalls, scaled pellet production for extrusion manufacturing partner trials.

2022 Goals: Raise Series A funding, commercially launch 1st Fortune 100 customer, launch 1st manufacturing partner, accelerate our thought-leadership brand and market momentum, scale operations.

Joby Aviation

Focus: Joby Aviation is a Californian venture-backed aerospace company, developing an electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft that it intends to operate as an air taxi service.

2021 Milestones: We became the first company to fly an electric aircraft as part of NASA’s National Campaign, providing a key opportunity for the agency to analyze our aircraft’s low noise profile. We completed 154-mile flight, we believe to be the longest ever eVTOL flight on a single charge. We began the process to receive a Part 135 Air Carrier Certificate, which is required to commence revenue-generating passenger flights. We began trading on the New York Stock Exchange through our merger with Reinvent Technology Partners (“RTP”).

2022 Goals: Continue with G-1 certification and testing. With more than 1,000 test flights behind us, we're looking ahead to breaking ground on our first large-scale manufacturing facility later this year, certifying our aircraft in 2023, and starting commercial operations in 2024.

LeverEd

Focus: LeverEd is currently focusing on getting our 3rd to 5th-grade math curriculum in as many students' hands as possible, as these ages are the most severely impacted by learning loss due to the pandemic.

2021 Milestones: 2021 was a big year for Levered, we hired our first employees and grew to a team of nine, many former teachers and educators. We also sold our product outside of California for the first time and have schools in Arizona, New Mexico, Washington, Idaho, and New York using Levered. Most importantly, we kept thousands of students learning math during the disruptions caused by the pandemic.

2022 Goals: Our goal in 2022 is to get Levered into 10 states, serving 20,000 students on our platform.

Parallel Flight Technologies

Focus: Parallel Flight builds industry leading heavy lift drones with hybrid powertrains

2021 Milestones: Beta demonstrated, customer deals being signed, raised 6.5M, hired several people.

2022 Goals: Get hundreds of hours of flight test data, begin FAA certification process, raise 10M for testing and certification work, continue to grow PFT, demonstrate large scale prescribed burns with USDA.

Purcell

Focus: Purcell (formerly known as SmartBins) is changing grocery shopping with package-at-purchase solutions

2021 Milestones: Oversubscribed Seed Funding Round. Texas implementation proved the online fulfillment model. 20% Purcell Dispenser sales were the back end for online fulfillment. 4 successful implementations with the world's largest food companies and retailers.Entered into a strategic partnership with a European hardware manufacturer giving Purcell global reach.Second Utility Patent issued.

2022 Goals: Implementation with Seventh Generation-Unilever. Series A Funding Round. Complete design for large-scale manufacturing on the S1 Dispenser. Keep up with orders!

SupplyShift

Focus: SupplyShift provides supply chain transparency and responsibility software that helps you discover the insights you need to mitigate risk and improve supplier performance — protecting your business, people, and the planet.

2021 Milestones: Raised A3 funding round to accelerate supply chain sustainability innovation. Launched sugar mapping tool with Bonsucro. Partnered with Fast Forward to launch a tech-powered transformation of the labor standards improvement program. Launched InvestShift.

2022 Goals: 2022 is going to be a massive year for us. In August 2021, Gartner released a supply chain hype cycle. SupplyShift is right at the top and 97% of procurement officers are saying that they're going to be making a purchasing decision in our industry in the next 18 months. We own it.

The Apptopus

Focus: The Apptopus is a SaaS company offering all in one services management for restaurants with a 3-tiered pricing, margin rates and a onetime setup fee. The Apptopus provides Integrated software, services and infrastructure to help small and medium sized restaurants scale online with sales channels like Doordash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, payment processing, marketing, and customer service.

2021 Milestones:

Hired an engineering team to build the backend technology that will scale as we grow and added a 2 person sales team.
Onboarded 100 restaurants across 17 cities in northern California, the bay area, and the central coast.
Designed and developed a native android application for our restaurant partners and a fully functioning dashboard for our team.
Integration with Clover POS systems, UberEats / Postmates, Flipdish Online Ordering
Closed the year with $500K In revenue
Got accepted and started Santa Cruz Works Accelerator

2022 Goals: In 2022 we hope to accomplish 10x what we have accomplished so far. We are in the process of negotiating a distribution deal with a local processing company that will place The Apptopus in front of 500 small businesses. This deal should finalize before the end of January 2022, and we are looking for additional partnerships with local companies that already work with businesses in our target market. In Q1, my focus will be on raising a seed round so we can expand our team, launch more integrations, develop additional services, launch a marketing campaign, and purchase hardware.

Unnatural Products

Focus: Using AI-enhanced technology, Unnatural Products creates new drugs by engineering passively permeable, macrocyclic peptides that access traditionally undruggable targets.

2021 Milestones: We completed all of our 2021 goals including a partnership with BridgeBio, doubling our headcount with brilliant and experienced talent, developed new capabilities for our drug discovery platform, and raised new capital from great new partners like Wing VC and Merck MSD GHI.

2022 Goals: Continue to expand the number of programs and push our current pipeline programs further towards the clinic, use our new platform technologies to expand our customer base and source some new partners to work with, and keep adding to our world class team of drug discovery and development experts in Santa Cruz.

10 Startups to Watch in 2022