subscription-software
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StartupCentrum and the art of reading past the headline
A record year for startup deals can hide a funding drought. StartupCentrum makes that contradiction useful, pairing ecosystem research with the people and tools founders need next.
Cloaked wants your phone number to be a bad investment
Two brothers began by giving people disposable identities. Then they discovered the harder job: persuading the internet to forget the identities people had already given away.
BeenVerified found its customers by losing the wrong ones
The founders wanted websites to buy trust. Consumers wanted something more practical: a way to look up the stranger, the number, or the car in front of them.
NRC Health and the business of being heard
A hospital can count satisfied patients and still miss what frightened them. NRC Health is building a business around closing that gap - one comment, conversation, and follow-up at a time.
Talk Fusion Corporate: The Face in Your Inbox, the Sale Behind It
Talk Fusion packages a human face, a branded email and a commission plan into one proposition. Its most revealing feature is the choice it offers at checkout: become a customer, or become a promoter.
Logos and the Library That Learned to Answer Back
A Bible on a screen was the beginning. Logos built a business in the connections between books, then learned how expensive it could be to wander beyond them.
Buffer put a price on freedom.
The social scheduling company spent $3.3 million to buy out its main venture investors. Its bet: useful software could support a business its people wanted to keep.
Goodnotes made handwriting searchable. Now it wants a say in what comes next.
A maths student’s battle with loose pages became a note-taking business used by more than 25 million people each month. Its next test: adding AI without crowding out the person holding the pen.
The Mac Cleaner That Wants to Become Your Mac's Operating Layer
CleanMyMac made digital housekeeping into a global business. Now MacPaw is spending that trust on a harder bet: security, software distribution and an AI assistant that can actually do things on your Mac.
Gen Digital
The company behind Norton, Avast and LifeLock is stitching cybersecurity to MoneyLion's financial toolkit. Its wager is that the next great consumer platform will sell peace of mind before, during and after something goes wrong.
Bentley Systems
Five brothers, one CAD engine, and four decades later the software running underneath much of the world's roads, rail, and water networks - now being rebuilt around digital twins and infrastructure AI.
Sage
Sage grew from a pub-side solution for one printer's paperwork into financial infrastructure for millions of businesses. Its next act is less about replacing the accountant than teaching software to chase invoices, explain anomalies and show its working.
Autodesk
Autodesk is a design and make software company whose tools power the buildings, products, movies, and infrastructure of the physical world. Best known for AutoCAD, the company now spans architecture, engineering and construction (Revit, Civil 3D, Forma), product design and manufacturing (Fusion, Inventor), and media and entertainment (Maya, 3ds Max, Arnold). With roughly $6 billion in fiscal 2025 revenue and a near-fully subscription business, Autodesk's stated mission is to empower everyone, everywhere to design and make anything - increasingly with cloud platforms and AI woven into the workflow.