Inc. Magazine November 2018

Every founder has a vision of the future, if only to imagine a world in which his or her company stands where there once was a void. But some companies will play a truly outsize role in determining what lies ahead for all of us. We’ve identified more than a dozen such companies and technologies in the package beginning on page 66. Executive director of editorial Jon Fine and San Francisco bureau chief Jeff Bercovici teamed up to find founders and firms that are extending the limits of what’s possible across several industries. Take, for example, Fulcrum BioEnergy (page 96), a company that is solving two problems at once by converting household waste into jet fuel. Or theMednet (page 78), a brother-and-sister-led firm that is opening up an entirely new communication…

Stefan Heck, the CEO of Bay Area–based Nauto, is the rare engineer who also has a background in philosophy—in his case, a PhD. Heck’s company works with commercial vehicle fleets to install computervision and A.I. equipment that studies road conditions and driver behavior. It then sells insights from that data about human driving patterns to autonomous-vehicle companies. Essentially, Nauto’s data helps shape how driverless cars behave on the road—or, put more broadly, how machines governed by artificial intelligence make life-or-death decisions. This is where the background in philosophy comes in handy. Heck spends his days trying to make roads safe. But the safest decisions don’t always conform to simple rules. To take a random example: Nauto’s data shows that drivers tend to exceed the posted speed limit by about 15 percent—and…

MEM-CHANICAL • adjective Describes a “crossbred keyboard with both membranes and a spring,” which gives your typing experience “the clickiness of mechanical switches with the affordability of rubber [keys].” For those who like Excel with a Hungry Hungry Hippos vibe. Source: PC Perspective NEXT-GENERATION ACCESS • noun A “Zero Trust” approach to computer network security that deploys “multifactor authentication,” “correlation between accesses and users,” “machine learning,” and “single signon” technology. Shorter version: Don’t plug in that thumb drive you found on the street. Source: Forrester TWAGGLE • noun A cross between “toggle” and “action,” twaggle is “theory and practice, practice and theory, concept and action, thinking and doing, doing and thinking, measuring and learning … all at the same time.” I assume they mean “twaddle.” Source: The Marketing Book ACCESSOMORPHOSIS • noun Per a famed designer: “The…

ADVANTAGE → LIBIN A tough call—but Gallup’s 2017 State of the American Workplace survey found that 20 to 29 percent of employees would change jobs for benefits like wellness programs and paid gym memberships—and Millennials are much more likely than their elders to change jobs for perks. DON’T LEAVE THIS ITEM LYING AROUND THE OFFICE Speaking of perks, online game developer Arkadium instituted what it calls its Infinite Possibilities Prize: Staffers submit essays describing a lifelong dream. One or two top performers each year will get time off and up to $25,000 to fulfill theirs. The award’s inaugural winner set off in October on a three-week trek through Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar.…

Football and hockey helmets do a great job of protecting skulls, but they haven’t been so good at preventing the injuries that happen in neck-jolting collisions when a brain slams around inside the skull. So Charles and Rob Corrigan came up with their Halo shirt, the first product from their startup Aexos. The Waterloo, Ontario-based brothers know from head injuries: Both had to stop playing hockey as teens after suffering too many concussions. Halo’s collar, made from a “smart” polymer, is soft but instantly stiffens when met with an accelerating force. That should help immobilize the neck when an athlete is hit in the head—in theory, limiting brain jostling, and helping to prevent whiplash, too. And it isn’t bulky—a crucial plus. “Athletes don’t want to add equipment,” says Charles. “They…

STARTUP NEIGHBORHOODS ▶ Distinguished by its abundance of renovated warehouses, the North Loop is home to many of the city’s co-working spaces, like the Coven—which is geared toward women and nonbinary people—along with medical startups like Zipnosis and Gravie. ▶ Food and drink entrepreneurs have set up shop in the Northeast—a 7.5-square-mile neighborhood on the edge of the Mississippi River—including local breweries 612Brew and Indeed Brewing,1 which distributes beers throughout the Midwest. WHO TO KNOW Serial entrepreneur Ryan Broshar 2 may have grown up on a farm in Iowa, but the University of Minnesota grad has since become a critical connector between entrepreneurs, investors, and business leaders here. In 2013, he launched the venture fund Matchstick, along with founder-focused organization Beta.MN. The following year, he started Twin Cities Startup Week, and in 2016 he…