The Rocket Ship Startup List (2025)

Where to Launch into Startupland

Each spring, I provide a comprehensive list of exciting, fast-growing, rapidly hiring startups that represent promising places to start (or continue) a career in Startupland.

This year, the theme in the innovation ecosystem is to leverage modern AI tools to drive productivity gains, in effect creating an army of 10x Founders and Joiners. As a result, hiring is more scarce. Software engineering job openings have hit a five-year low. At the same time, the AI wave is fueling amazing growth and opportunity. This list tries to capture where those specific pockets of opportunity lie for startup joiners.

The methodology for compiling the list remains the same: leveraging insider knowledge and input from VC and entrepreneur friends around the globe, we mix subjective and objective criteria in assembling the list. The objective criteria this year include:

• Growth and momentum. Companies listed are growing revenue > 100% YoY (or > 50% for those of larger scale). In the AI market, where traditional revenue metrics can lag massive product adoption, some accommodations were made.

• Hiring growth. This list is not valuation-driven but rather hiring-driven. Thus, we looked for companies that were growing headcount over the last 6, 12, and 24 months. The number of job openings and the types of job openings were factored in.

• Scale. Listed companies typically have> 50 employees. In a few cases, this threshold was relaxed to reflect AI superstars who are growing outrageously fast in other metrics, but doing so wildly efficiently (HT to the Tiny Teams Hall of Fame, who have achieved > $1M in revenue/employee, including our portfolio company BoldVoice).

• Fundraising. In the Age of AI, fundraising is less important. Yet, building a massively valuable, enduring company still requires capital. We looked for companies that had raised > $50M in total capital with > $30M in the most recent round, ideally within the last 12 months.

• Vintage. We biased the list to companies founded in 2013 or later.

We cover a wide range of geographies with the help of local VCs -- Canada, Europe, India, Israel, MENA, LatAm, and SE Asia. Pitchbook and LinkedIn are important data sources, but less reliable outside the US, and so we are particularly grateful for the dozens of friends who shared their local market insights.

This year's Rocket Ship List contains over 600 companies -- over 300 US companies and just under 300 companies outside the US. 70% of the AI companies are based in the US. The geographic breakdown is here:

Although many companies remain remote-first, most large companies are once again geographically centered in one of the large global tech hubs. I advise my students to select and commit to a particular geography, as building a career in a community can be so rewarding for both their careers and their lives (for my advice on how to secure a startup job, see my Joiner Playbook).

As usual, I am sure I have made many mistakes and omissions, and so thank you in advance for your feedback (comments below, please). A very special thank you to the indefatigable Vandit Gandotra of Harvard Business School, whose hard work and precision made this year's list what it is.

Without further ado, here is the list:

And here are the twelve companies that have achieved greater than $1 billion in value with fewer than 100 employees.

Finally, if you want to see more about how to build a Rocket Ship and become a 10x founder, see my new book on that topic -- The Experimentation Machine: Finding Product-Market Fit in the Age of AI.