The Most Interesting Startups in the World

Of all of the fun lists that BusinessWeek puts together, their recent "World's Most Intriguing Startups" is my favorite. The idea of being intriguing is less about whether a startup is a hit yet, and more about what it understands intuitively about changing economies. While their list is pretty good, there are a few more I might include.

Their list is, perhaps unsurprisingly, filled with green companies. BioFuel Box reuses waste products to create fuel, BrightSource Energy is trying to do solar on a massive scale. ChargePoint is a network of electric car rechargers rolled out in a couple cities now and trying for more. If I were to add some of the most interesting startups in the environmental space, I would look to the Pop!Tech Fellows class of 2009. Lebônê generates electricity from microbes in soil to power basic LEDs and other basic electric needs in the developing world. re:char converts agricultural waste into renewable energy. Ecovative Design is working on a styrofoam replacement built using mushrooms.

The BusinessWeek issue also points out CitySourced - a crowdsourcing tool for civic participation in urban areas. I think it's a great tool, but if we're going to look at creative crowdsourcing, I would also include Samasource - which gives refugees the tools to participate in the American digital economy, and The Extraordinaries, which is giving nonprofits a platform to harness the efforts of microvolunteers for tasks like translation, copy editing, and more. From the sustainable design field, Driptech made it on to the list. Driptech sells an affordable drip irrigation system for small plot farmers that can significantly increase yields. I would add the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, an Echoing Green fellow group that builds energy and agricultural technology to help the developing world. And I'd definitely include Catapult Design, which is trying to harness the sort of design talent and energy that gets directed to products and services at innovative companies like IDEO and frog design, and channel it towards improving offerings to the bottom of the pyramid market. The list is chock full with other great groups as well in areas like medical services, web technology, and music sharing. I think it's worth a read, and it's also worth a thought about what makes a startup intriguing. For me it's the big bet on a better world that I want to know about. (Photo: Driptech's diagram of their product)