Seattle is best known for being the headquarters of two of the biggest tech giants in the world—Amazon and Microsoft—but experts say the Seattle area is on the edge of a major startup boom. A confluence of factors including lots of talent and the increasing availability of venture capital and angel investments are making the city a hub for some of the most exciting startups in the country. Business Insider recently compiled a list of Seattle’s 18 top enterprise startups—meaning private companies that haven’t sold a majority stake—to watch in 2020, based on nominations from industry leaders and venture capitalists.
Among the companies on BI’s list was McKesson Ventures portfolio company Accolade.
Accolade calls itself a “health care concierge” service whose 1,100 employees support 1.5 million members. It’s a subscription-based service sold to companies to help their employees best utilize their health benefits and resources. The company made the list because of several factors including its CEO, Rajeev Singh, one of the co-founders of expense reporting software company Concur, which was sold to SAP in 2014 for $8.3 billion. With Singh at the helm, Accolade has gained an array of big-name customers including Comcast, Lowe’s, American Airlines, United Airlines, Apptio, Intuit, and Amerigas.
To date, Accolade has raised an estimated $240 million and its valuation is estimated to be at $630 million as of October 2019. In addition to McKesson Ventures, the company’s investors include Andressen Horowitz, Madrona Venture Group, Carrick Capital Partners, CrossCreek Advisors, and Madera Technology Partners.
Other Seattle-area companies that made the Business Insider list include cybersecurity and user authentication service Auth0, cloud security and analytics startup ExtraHop, cloud contract management firm Icertis, enterprise data management company Igneous, marketing and analytics software firm Moz, sales automation startup Outreach, and augmented writing software company Textio.
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