Seed 100: Read BI's coverage on the dealmakers backing the next big thing
The Seed 100 highlights and celebrates those early sage dealmakers who provide the essential first push to startups that go on to become some of the greatest successes in the tech world.
Likewise, the Seed 40 spotlights the top women early-stage investors who have a knack for finding breakout companies and the startup founders building them.
Since 2021, Business Insider has partnered with Termina to use its data analysis to produce these lists. Read the full methodology behind the lists.
The 100 seed-stage investors you need to know in 2025 — and 40 of the most influential women in the field.
Get to know the investors placing the earliest bets and shaping the next generation of breakout startups.
A look at past Seed 100s
Browse our previous Seed 100 lists to see how early-stage investing has evolved over the years.
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Tired of waiting for Tesla's 'more affordable' car? Check out Nissan's new sub-$30K EV.
Nissan revealed a complete refresh of its LEAF electric vehicle on Tuesday, and it's the cheapest new EV on the US market. The 2026 Leaf has been updated with a new design and an improved EPA-estimated range of 303 miles, adding more than 90 miles of range over its 2025 model. The starting manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) is $29,990, making the LEAF the only sub-$30,000 EV on the market. "Remarkably, its MSRP is lower today than it was when the original LEAF launched in 2011 at $32,780," a Nissan spokesperson told Business Insider in an email. "We've stuck to our mission of engineering EVs that are affordable but packed with value. That's how we've kept the LEAF's price steady over three generations — all while giving owners more style, more technology, more features, and a vastly improved driving range over the original 2011 model." America's transition to electric vehicles has slowed down in recent years. Part of the problem is the lack of affordable options for consumers. The Trump administration's move to ax the $7,500 federal tax credit could also make EVs more expensive. "Nissan is refreshing its product portfolio with new and updated models featuring electrified powertrains, responding to increasing interest in affordable EVs, including those in the sub-$30k price bracket," the Nissan spokesperson said. Even Tesla, the top EV seller in the US for more than half a decade, is not immune to slumping sales and demands for cheaper models. Tesla's most affordable option, the Model 3 sedan, starts at $34,990. In 2020, Tesla CEO Elon Musk proposed making a "compelling $25,000 electric vehicle." Four years later, his tone shifted, and he called a model at that price "pointless." Still, Tesla said in January that production of "more affordable models" was on track to start in the first half of 2025. During Tesla's second-quarter earnings in July, company executives, including Musk, had zero updates on that progress.
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an hour ago
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I left my corporate career to start a cleaning business 5 years ago. I still don't take a salary, but my family is doing much better off.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Burgess Heberer, a 37-year-old business owner, based in Santa Claus, Indiana. The following has been edited for length and clarity. I loved my old job. I worked on infant formulas and children's nutritional products, and really believed in what I was doing. But I could also see that the corporate ladder structure was holding me and my family back from our financial goals. When I decided to leave my job to pursue my side hustle full-time, I'd been working as a research and development operations scientist. However, this past June, my wife and I celebrated five years in business doing exterior home cleaning. I still don't take a weekly paycheck or a salary from our business, but my family is better off in all regards. I quickly learned I could replace my 9-to-5 salary with my side hustle After my wife and I replaced our roof about a decade ago, I started to learn about exterior home cleaning. During the COVID pandemic, when I had more time on my hands, we started exploring the idea of doing it ourselves. We bought some equipment to test things out. When we first started, we followed online guides and did jobs for my in-laws. Then we started doing jobs for neighbors and people in town. I saw how many jobs I already had scheduled and knew what our pricing was for each type of job. It quickly became pretty clear that I could make my salary doing this. As soon as word spread, things took off. I officially left my job in July 2020. Please help BI improve our Business, Tech, and Innovation coverage by sharing a bit about your role — it will help us tailor content that matters most to people like you. What is your job title? (1 of 2) Entry level position Project manager Management Senior management Executive management Student Self-employed Retired Other Continue By providing this information, you agree that Business Insider may use this data to improve your site experience and for targeted advertising. By continuing you agree that you accept the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . A grant helped us expand the business In our second year in business, we applied for a grant at Jobber, which we use as our home servicing software. The grant gave us a $10,000 injection early on, allowing us to take the next step: growing the business rather than just hoping it survives. We started expanding into other services, such as exterior window cleaning. This led us into a more expensive market because we could reach much larger houses and commercial buildings. There are seven full-time people on our crew, and I have a couple of part-time guys who are either college students or semi-retired. We target revenue between $15,000 and $20,000 a week The amount we make varies because some jobs are larger than others. Typically, a crew can complete two average-sized jobs a day, which would be a house, driveway, and its windows. Since everything's based on square footage, it's pretty accurate to know our revenue that week and plan accordingly. We use that as a metric to guide us. We can do $25,000 a week with all hands on deck, but it just depends. The bulk of our business is residential, but we also have commercial clients, specialty customers, theme parks, food processing facilities, and universities. We go to some customers yearly, and others we do quarterly. Being a two-income household gave me the flexibility to pursue starting a full-time business I don't know that I would've done this without my wife's income, which was our safety net. We still have our insurance through her job teaching middle school music. My wife handles most of our payroll, scheduling, and customer quoting. She aims to teach for 15 years before semi-retiring. After that, she'll continue working part-time for our business. To financially prepare for the transition, we cut back on vacations and waited to make home renovations. Things we had budgeted for got put to the side, and I knew I'd lose my 401(k) gains and all the other things that come along with a corporate job. It was definitely a huge risk. Learning to balance being my own boss has been a big adjustment Before, we lived almost exclusively off my wife's salary, but now the business revenue covers some of our personal bills and finances. I still don't take paychecks. Rather than getting a salary with a weekly check, I preferred to reinvest that money back in the business. Last year, we generated over $630,000 in revenue. We'd like to reach at least $1 million in revenue before I start carving out a guaranteed monthly paycheck. I put pressure on myself because I'm trying to meet my own goals, which I think is sometimes harder than trying to impress a boss. At home in the evenings, we're always talking business, so there's no clock out. Owning the business allowed me to do things I never got to do before, like take my daughter to school drop-off. While my wife and I work more than we did before, the flexibility is unlike it has ever been.
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Why health AI unicorn Innovaccer is making acquisitions and raising secondary rounds instead of chasing an IPO
Healthcare AI unicorn Innovaccer has a lot on its docket, including two to three additional acquisitions planned in the coming months. But an IPO isn't on its to-do list. The 11-year-old company has been buying itself more time in the private markets through secondary transactions as it rolls out more software to add to its suite of healthcare AI offerings. In January, Innovaccer raised $275 million in funding, which included nearly $100 million in secondary sales for early investors. Then, as an extension to the Series F round, Innovaccer facilitated a $50 million tender offer for employees, funded by the round's investors. "For any company that's successful at this point, this is going to happen," cofounder and CEO Abhinav Shashank told Business Insider. "If the business is evolving that rapidly, you get freedom to make longer-term bets in private markets, a lot more than the public markets would allow you to do. …Private markets have never had the kind of depth they have today." It's an increasingly common sentiment among venture-backed startups confronting a tougher IPO environment. While Hinge Health and Omada Health both had successful public listings this spring, digital health's 2021 IPO cohort has significantly underperformed the broader market. Today, healthcare IPO hopefuls are expected to generate several hundred million dollars in revenue, achieve profitability, and show growth of 30% or higher, investors and bankers told BI earlier this year. Shashank said Innovaccer, valued at $3.45 billion in its most recent raise, is well on its way toward those metrics. It's growing its revenue at a rate of over 40% and bringing in more cash than it's burning. Innovaccer declined to share its current revenue. But with plenty of capital available to Innovaccer in the private markets, the startup isn't in any rush to go public. Innovaccer would have little need to raise additional capital were it not for the startup's M&A ambitions, Shashank said. He said the startup is already in talks with potential targets, and expects to make two to three additional acquisitions in the next six months. What Innovaccer wants in an acquisition Innovaccer set out to build tech infrastructure to connect disparate health data sources. With the rise of AI, it's aiming to use that infrastructure to allow AI agents and other new tools to communicate with each other inside health systems. On top of its platform, Innovaccer offers AI call center agents, revenue cycle management software, population health analytics tech, and even an ambient medical scribe. Shashank said it plans to announce more capabilities in the coming months. "It becomes the one place where you can solve tens of these problems, rather than picking a point solution for everything and then spending millions of dollars on system integrators to make them work together," he said. Because of the breadth of its tech, Innovaccer has plenty of competitors, from public health data companies like Health Catalyst to startups like $7 billion Datavant and $6 billion Commure. As Innovaccer looks to M&A to accelerate its growth, Shashank said the startup's top target is tech that automates administrative tasks for hospitals' revenue cycle teams. He said Innovaccer is also looking for acquisitions in remote patient monitoring, care management automation, and specialties like cardiology and oncology. Innovaccer has made three acquisitions to date, including two buys in 2024 and one this January, and has plenty of cash in the bank to make more, Shashank said. The startup currently works with over 130 large health systems, a scale of distribution that Shashank is one of Innovaccer's biggest value-adds to its acquisition targets. The startup wants to cater to those customers with more partnerships, too. Shashank said Innovaccer plans to launch a curated marketplace of 20 to 30 companies integrated with its platform in the next year or so. Customers using Innovaccer's infrastructure can then choose from a broader range of third-party tools to fit their needs without worrying about data interoperability. Does Innovaccer still need the public markets? With top companies like OpenAI staying private and delivering hearty returns to investors through secondary sales, "there's a good question that I think boards are discussing at this point: why is a public offering the ultimate goal?" Shashank said. In private markets, companies can take bigger swings like major acquisitions without retail investor scrutiny, he said. He pointed to startups Databricks and Stripe, which have been able to grow aggressively while giving their early investors some liquidity via secondary sales. Shashank said he still thinks the public markets are the best way for most companies to build in the longer term, and he expects Innovaccer to go public when the time is right. To be sure, the largest secondary sales are enjoyed by top AI and software startups, which can reach far higher valuations and thus generally entertain more investor demand than healthtech companies. But Shashank wants Innovaccer to keep scaling, and ideally record $500 million in annual recurring revenue or more, before it reaches that milestone. "There's a bunch that we're doing right now, so I think [an IPO] is at least a couple of years out," he said.
