Small companies face a unique set of challenges when it comes to survival, whether it’s securing funding, garnering brand recognition, or retaining employees. While there’s no hard-and-fast blueprint for these businesses to aspire to, they do understand the value of grit and resilience, rendering them crucial to the sectors they represent. This year’s small and mighty honorees with fewer than 50 employees prove that size is hardly indicative of success and that a company doesn’t need to be large to have an outsize impact.
Some of this year’s winners are pursuing bold ideas to take on broken systems. Alife Health is leveraging AI to mitigate the challenges of IVF, a procedure that can cost up to $15,000 per round in the United States. The health tech company’s “Stim Assist” software tool pulls from a wealth of knowledge—nearly 40,000 IVF cases—to inform a current patient’s needs and predict their likeliest path to successful fertilization. Another winner, the Very Good Bra, wants to reduce the nearly 92 million tons of textile waste that end up in landfills across the globe annually by creating the first compostable nursing bra. As fast fashion giants like Shein continue to profit off of and encourage wasteful practices, The Very Good Bra offers a hopeful look at an alternative path the fashion industry can aspire toward.
Other honorees like Elo Life Systems and Carbon Capture Machine are applying advanced technological solutions to a worsening climate crisis. The former has developed gene editing technology that’s saved the bananas you see in your grocery store today from extinction. Now it’s “teaching” crops how to grow in unconventional environments. The latter, which pulls carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere to reuse for alternative purposes like construction materials, opened a third lab location this past year and expanded its international presence through projects and competitions.
1. Alife Health
2. Tinkercast
For engaging kids in a new way amidst the challenges of a post-COVID learning environment
3. Column Tax
For making tax season less taxing
4. Surf Music
For discovering a new way for artists to make money from songs they’ve created
5. Carbon Capture Machine
For nabbing global opportunities to turn carbon dioxide into carbonate
6. MeliBio
For fructifying a buzzworthy, plant-based honey
7. Halo
8. Elo Life Systems
For bioengineering solutions for popular but environmentally challenged foods
9. The Very Good Bra
For creating the first fully compostable nursing bra
10. Atma Global
For creating a digital, centralized platform that increases accessibility to educational materials
Explore the full 2024 list of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, 606 organizations that are reshaping industries and culture. We’ve selected the firms making the biggest impact across 58 categories, including advertising, artificial intelligence, design, sustainability, and more.