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The “Top 100 Analytics Startups of 2015” was a Forbes feature by Louis Columbus, published August 8, 2015, using data from Mattermark Pro. Its “top” label described companies identified through Mattermark’s growth signals—not the 100 best products, the most profitable businesses, or a forecast of which firms would endure. Forbes linked a spreadsheet as the original list; the ten most-funded companies it highlighted were a subset, not necessarily the first ten overall by rank.
What the 2015 list was—and was not
Forbes’ list was a snapshot of private enterprise-software companies selling analytics-related products on a business-to-business basis. Mattermark supplied the company data and Growth Score framework. The article presented the score as a way to spot momentum and companies worth tracking, including for people considering where to work. It explicitly cautioned that the score was not investment advice.
That distinction matters if you are using the list for financial or business research today. A high momentum score in 2015 does not establish product quality, durable customer demand, profitability, or investment performance. The ranking was data-driven but vendor-dependent: it relied substantially on Mattermark’s proprietary database and classification system, rather than an independently audited industry index.
Read the original Forbes article. Forbes linked the original spreadsheet, which is the appropriate source for the complete 100-company table. The article’s accessible text does not establish every company’s rank or reproduce the full table, so the ten highlighted names below should not be mistaken for the complete ranking. Forbes now labels the piece as more than ten years old.
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How Mattermark selected companies
The article describes the process as a search for private companies developing and selling analytics software to enterprise customers, primarily through a B2B model. Mattermark then excluded businesses whose status in its database indicated an exit, such as an acquisition or IPO. That is the stated rule; it does not independently verify that every historical company classification or exit date was correct.
Mattermark’s Growth Score combined indicators of attention and business growth. The article described signals including web traffic and social traction, alongside changes in employee counts and funding. The underlying idea was that movement across several signals could indicate an active company shipping products and engaging customers. The article did not provide a complete formula, feature weights, or a company-by-company score table in its accessible text, so the score cannot be reconstructed precisely from the description alone.
- Universe: private enterprise B2B analytics-software companies.
- Source: Mattermark Pro, whose database the article described as covering more than one million private companies, with employee data for more than 470,000 and more than 100,000 funding events.
- Exclusions: companies Mattermark marked as exited.
- Signals: web and social attention, employee growth, funding, and related business-growth indicators.
- Limit: a historical proprietary momentum measure, not a ranking by audited revenue, customer satisfaction, investment returns, or product testing.
Funding data also needs care: the article does not establish that each amount was independently audited paid-in capital. Nor should funding be treated as proof of business quality or long-term success.
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Forbes reported that these ten companies were the most funded in its selected group, with approximately $3.4 billion in combined funding:
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- Palantir Technologies
- Domo
- MuleSoft
- Medallia
- Qualtrics
- Zeta Interactive
- Sumo Logic
- Lithium
- Tanium
- Birst
“Most funded” is not the same as “highest Growth Score.” The source does not establish that these firms held the top ten places in the overall ranking. Their inclusion also shows that “startup” was being used broadly for private, high-growth technology companies, not only for small or newly founded businesses.
What counted as analytics?
The list was broader than dashboard and business-intelligence software. The enterprise analytics boundary could encompass business intelligence, predictive and sales analytics, marketing and customer-experience analysis, security analytics, log and machine-data analysis, and data integration or analytics infrastructure. Companies such as MuleSoft, Tanium, and Sumo Logic illustrate why: their products touched integration, systems management, or machine data as well as analytics. A company’s later product positioning may differ from what it offered in 2015, so current descriptions should not be backdated without evidence.
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Where the companies were—and how mature they appeared
According to the article, 49% of the selected companies were based in the Bay Area, 11% in New York, and 10% in Boston. Those three locations together accounted for 70% of the list, calculated from the published percentages. The figures suggest a strong concentration in established centers for venture funding, technical talent, and enterprise customers. They are not a complete geographic census: the remaining share covers other locations, and the article’s available text does not supply a full city-by-city or country-by-country breakdown. Percentages may also be rounded.
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Forbes also reported that 32% of the companies were in late-stage funding cycles under Mattermark’s 2015 classifications. That label should not be translated into a specific modern round such as Series C or D. The other 68% cannot automatically be called early-stage; they may have included several different funding or company-stage classifications.
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Why the ranking was useful in 2015
The feature was intended as a way to identify companies gaining traction: businesses to follow, potential employers to investigate, and private firms attracting attention and capital. Employee growth can be relevant to a job seeker because it may indicate hiring and expansion, while funding and web or social activity offer additional context. But each is an imperfect signal. Hiring can reflect investment rather than sustainable demand, and online attention does not establish revenue, retention, or a healthy business model.
The article disclosed that Columbus contacted Mattermark and received a limited free trial, and that he had not performed consulting work for the company. That disclosure is relevant to the provenance of the ranking, alongside the more fundamental point that Mattermark provided the underlying data and scoring system.
How to use the list now
For historical research, use the Forbes article and linked spreadsheet as the record of what the 2015 analysis reported. Keep the date and the original company names attached to any notes. If you are assessing what happened afterward, investigate each company separately and distinguish its 2015 product and ownership from later acquisitions, public listings, pivots, closures, or continued private operation. Inclusion alone does not prove success, and absence may reflect the article’s exited-company filter or timing rather than lack of importance.
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For current startup research, today’s company databases may help with company profiles, funding histories, alerts, taxonomies, or exports, but none should be assumed to reproduce Mattermark’s 2015 Growth Score. Crunchbase describes paid plans and capabilities on its official subscription comparison; Dealroom, Tracxn, and PitchBook publish their current plan or pricing information on their respective pricing, pricing, and pricing pages. Those products differ in data, access, and pricing, and are useful only if their present scope matches your research question. They are not a way to retroactively verify the original proprietary score.
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