11 Exciting USC Startups

A list of the most exciting early-stage startups created by USC students and alumni

Company Overview:

Huddles – a platform connecting short-form video content creators to fans. They let creators earn revenue from their fans (through tips and subscriptions) and engage with their audience (through fan mail). Currently, they have 5,000 creators on the platform. With the increasing shift to short-form content (and the decline in ad revenue and exclusivity of brand deals), Huddles provides an alternative path for creators to earn money while cultivating a close-knit community. They raised a $9.1M seed round from 776 Ventures in March 2021.

Captivated – a platform that lets you easily collect and understand customer feedback from your users via a few lines of code. It would be interesting to know how difficult it is to create feedback loops in-house and whether companies would seek to use a platform like Captivated instead of just building it out themselves. The founders are building in public on Twitter, have a waitlist of 42 companies since they launched on Jan 3rd, and just started working on it full time. They haven't raised any funding yet.

Opkit – an easy way to accept patient payments. They label themselves as the "Stripe for Healthcare". Their platform makes it easy to determine if a patient's health and insurance plan is active, it returns relevant benefits (co-pays, deductibles, etc.), and integrates with thousands of insurance carriers. The founders were early engineers at Brex. They are still early, having only raised $125,000 from YC as part of their S21 batch.

DealLab – a B2B sales collaboration platform that consolidates deals into single deal rooms for reps to streamline communication and alignment. They were founded in 2022 and have raised $200,000 in pre-seed funding. 

Flick – a platform to manage projects between clients and freelancers so that they stay on the same page from proposal to handoff. The platform is end-to-end, enabling both parties to design contracts on the platform, get paid per checkpoint, communicate via messages, and propose revisions. Flick takes a currently fragmented process (the communication and collaboration on freelance projects) and transforms it into a seamless experience. To date, Flick hasn’t raised any funding yet. 

Zuma – convert hot leads into booked tours. Zuma operates an AI-powered agent that answers any questions that customers have in real-time. The AI converts hot leads into contracts and loops in humans if questions are out of the AI’s scope to answer. According to TechCrunch, in 2021, the company grew revenue by 10x and “is working with customers like Bungalow.com, which see an average conversion rate increase of 2.1 times in 30 days and 35 times return on investment, while saving an average of 50% on sales staffing costs”. They most recently raised a $6.7M seed round in Nov 21, led by a16z.

Playground – a childcare management software that manages billing, attendance, registration, communication, paperwork, reporting and more for childcare programs. They raised a $3.4M seed round from Bedrock and Human Capital.

RootFi – an API for accounting and commerce data. RootFi provides a secure integration layer with a growing catalogue of APIs, enabling companies to start shipping tools to underwrite credit risk, automate accounting, and perform analytics. They raised a $2M seed round in 2022.

BookOutdoors – the AirBnB of outdoor accommodations. BookOutdoors is a marketplace for outdoor travel accommodations and is currently available in 18 states across the US. Campground accommodations (and the associated booking process) is still very siloed and with the lack of modern online amenities, this results in a poor accommodation experience for travelers. BookOutdoors is trying to solve that through a modernized marketplace. To date, they have raised $4M in seed funding led by GreatPoint Ventures in Nov 2022.

Discz – the Tinder for music. Discz provides users with custom song recommendations that users can listen to and swipe through. Given the benefit of capturing explicit data on user feedback, this enables Discz to provide users with 10x better recommendations than Spotify. To date, they have raised $5.8M following the YC W22 batch.

Typedream – with Typedream, you can build web pages, customize them, and even connect your existing database without code. Typedream is ideally positioned for creating quick, well-designed landing pages as offers direct competition to companies like Framer & Webflow. They raised a $2M seed round led by YC in June 2021.