12 Hot Startups to Join Founded by Ex-Google Engineers
Large tech companies like Facebook, Google, and Apple are home to some of the brightest engineers in Silicon Valley. That is of course, until they’re ready to start their own company. And so… we were curious… What are some of the most interesting companies today founded by former Google engineers?
We found close to 200 recent startups in the AngelList database that were started by former Google engineers. In this post, we highlight 12 of the most interesting ones — and some of them are currently hiring. Read on, and if you’re looking to make a move check out their open positions.
1. Coda
Coda is a new type of document that blends the flexibility of documents, the power of spreadsheets, and the utility of apps into a single new canvas. The company just raised $60M from top investors like Greylock, Khosla Ventures, and General Catalyst to rethink how we approach documents, with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman is joining the board of directors.
Co-founded by two Google alums, CEO Shishir Mehrotra, who has spent his life in documents, and Alex DeNeui, the company has been in stealth for three years and has just launched publicly. Check out their open positions.
2. Cardiogram
Cardiogram is an Apple Watch app that measures your heart rate every five minutes, and uses the data to help you get a better picture of your sleep, stress, fitness, and overall health patterns. You can use it to measure your resting heart rate, daily activity level, and sleep. You can also use it to build and track habits, like sleeping for 7+ hours, meditating, or going on a daily bike ride.
Co-founder: Brandon Ballinger, worked as a Google Software Engineer from 2006–2011. He also worked on the Healthcare.gov rescue team. This is his second startup since leaving Google. He also co-founded Sift Science in 2011, which fights fraud with large-scale machine learning.
Job Opening: Cardiogram is currently looking for a front-end software engineer to join their team in San Francisco. Apply here.
3. Amplitude
Amplitude is an analytics platform that helps you understand user behavior, ship the best features quickly, and drive specific business outcomes. This tool does it all — from helping you understand which features are the most engaging, to identifying on-site behaviors that predict user retention.
Co-founder: Curtis Liu. He helped form the company in 2012 as Co-founder and CTO. He was an Engineer at Google from 2010–2011. This is his second startup since leaving the company, and he also Co-founded Sonalight in 2011, which is working on next generation of voice control technology.
Job Openings: Amplitude has a number of openings, including: senior DevOps Engineer, Senior Backend Engineer, Senior Applications Engineer, and Product Manager. Apply here.
4. TextNow
TextNow is the world’s first cloud-based phone carrier. The company’s goal is to connect the world more effectively by creating the most exceptional and affordable phone service — without a contract.
Co-founder: Jon Lerner. He’s worked as an Engineer at Google twice — in 2008, and again from 2014–2017. He became the founding CTO of TextNow in 2009, and remains on the board today.
Job Openings: TextNow is currently hiring for multiple positions, including a Quality Engineering Lead, Growth Web Developer, Andriod Team Lead, iOS Team Lead, and Senior Web Developer. Apply here.
5. DITTO
DITTO is a virtual try-on and frame recommendation technology for eyewear retailers. It measures a customer’s face shape, features, measurements, skin tone, and hair and eye color. Then, it uses that information to allow the customer to digitally try on as many frames as they want.
Co-founder: Sergey Surkov is the founding CTO of DITTO Technologies, which launched in 2010. He recently co-founded another startup called sourcerer.io, which builds intelligent profiles for engineers. He was a Software Engineer at Google from 2007–2010, working on search ranking and search UI.
Job Openings: DITTO is currently looking for a Director of Finance to join their team in San Francisco. Apply Here.
6. Vymo
Vymo is a high-performance personalized and intelligent enterprise assistant. It schedule, communicates, and plans your work life while you’re on the go. Similar to the Google Now product, the tool predicts what a sales rep or manager should do next, and helps teams generate 30–50% more sales within the first three months of using the product.
Co-founder: Venkat Malladi is the Co-founder and CEO of Vymo, which launched in 2013. He worked at Google as an engineer from 2006–2011, focusing on mobile search and mobile maps development.
Job Openings: Vymo is looking for an Inside Sales Executive, a Regional Sales Manager, a Market Research Executive, and a Social Media Lead. Learn more here.
7. Zenysis
Zenysis is building software that helps governments and international organizations improve public health systems, respond to large-scale humanitarian emergencies, and tackle other unpredictable and complex challenges quickly. The software is specifically designed to help developing countries, and currently helps countries and organizations serving 100 million people around the world.
Co-founder: Ian Webster is the Co-founder and CTO of Zenysis, which launched in 2015. He was an engineer at Google from 2014–2016 following the tech giant’s acquisitions of a company called Room 77, where he was the Tech Lead and Senior Software Engineer.
Job Opening: Zenysis is looking for a Senior Engineer to join their team in San Francisco. Apply here.
8. Shoes of Prey
Shoes of Prey is a global e-commerce retail brand that allows women to create their very own custom-made shoes at non-luxury prices. They are made just for you, and arrive at your door in two weeks. The company was born out of a problem that one of the co-founders, Jodie Fox, was trying to solve for herself: finding the perfect shoe.
Co-founder: Former Google engineer (2007–2009) Mike Knapp is the company’s founding CTO. He was at the company from launch in 2009 until early 2017; he recently left to start another company, Mottle (pre-launch).
Job Openings: The Shoes of Prey team is currently hiring for a Software Developer position. Learn more here.
9. SnapTravel
SnapTravel lets users book hotels at heavily discounted exclusive rates over SMS and Facebook Messenger. How? Hotels sell unsold inventory to Priceline and Hotwire because the prices are too low to show publicly. SnapTravel then lets you book at those special rates without having to guess the hotel’s name because your discounted price isn’t displayed publicly over private chat. A genius workaround.
Co-founder: Henry Shi is the Co-founder and CTO of SnapTravel, which launched in 2016. He was an engineer at Google from 2014–2015, building and launching Music Insights for Artists. Prior to joining Google, he co-founded another startup, uMentioned, a college-based location app that connects campuses online.
Job Openings: There are a bunch of open positions at SnapTravel. The company is looking for a Senior Marketing Manager, a Talent Acquisition Manager, and has multiple engineering roles available. Apply here.
10. DotDashPay
DotDashPay is a payment and loyalty IoT software platform that helps retailers transform any interactive customer experience into one that accepts payments. Imagine items equipped with RFID tags, interactive screens, and price scanners that help customers pay whenever they are ready and self-service machines. It works anywhere — from gas stations, to drive-through windows, to retail stores.
Founder: Sean Arietta is the Founder and CEO of DotDash Pay. He was an engineer at Google from 2010–2012, where he worked on various projects — from building algorithm for scoring complex Google Image Search queries, to laying the groundwork for automatic annotation of personal photo collections in Google Photos. He also founded two other startups: Empower the Athlete and SleepCoach.
11. Zerocycle
Zerocycle’s flagship product is a citywide comparison report for homeowners and city officials that tracks recycling effectiveness by neighborhood. The company sends in-depth reports with full-color maps and neighborhood recycling rankings to foster friendly competition in an effort to increase recycling efforts.
Co-founder: Yoni Ben-Meshulam is one of the company’s co-founders. He’s also currently a senior engineer at Google, designing and implementing machine learning and control algorithms across the suite of Nest products.
Job Opening: Zerocycle is looking for an intern. Apply here.
12. Cape
Cape virtualizes drone hardware. Users can log into Cape’s online cloud platform from anywhere, and connect to crash-proof physical drones that may be located thousands of miles away. They can fly drones safely with high-res video and ultra-low latency controls that can be used to analyze threats and identify safety issues without ever having to deploy helicopters or a team.
Co-founder: Thomas Finsterbusch is the Co-founder and CTO of Cape, which launched in 2014. He was an engineer at Google from 2012 to 2014, working on large-scale machine learning, user modeling, and recommender systems for Google X.
Job Openings: The Cape team is looking to hire a Drone Software Lead and a Sales Account Executive. Apply here.
