Meet America’s Best Startup Employers 2024

A growing number of companies have been putting return-to-work mandates into action—often forcing employees who relocated during the pandemic to move back near a company hub or leave their jobs entirely. But Tendo, a healthcare startup founded by two siblings in 2020, has taken a different approach: it’s bringing the office to employees.

Case in point: When several of Tendo’s San Francisco-based employees moved to San Diego during the pandemic, one employee “was very keen on building a team there,” says Jen Goldsmith, co-founder of Tendo, which provides software that enables clinicians and providers to connect more seamlessly with patients and caregivers. “He would go out and find really awesome people to hire who are very mission oriented,” she says, and eventually he asked to set up an office in San Diego. Though the company already had several locations around the country, including its headquarters in Philadelphia, Goldsmith and her co-founder (and brother) Dan Goldsmith recognized the value in an office space where the team could connect IRL. They gave the employee the go-ahead. And today the San Diego office, which opened in 2023, boasts a kickball team, a Tendo surfboard that sits inside the office for communal use, and regular get-togethers for both work and play.

Although Tendo remains a remote-first workplace, the tale is illustrative of the founders’ approach to collaboration. “Dan and I have created a culture of openness; we discuss everything with the employees, and tell them almost nothing is off limits,” says Jen. “Everybody owns stock in the company, so everybody is an owner of Tendo.” The Goldsmiths, adds Dan, ascribe to the philosophy that the best and most important things happen because of teams, not because of individuals. (Indeed, every one of the company’s almost 150 employees is listed—and pictured—on the website.) And it’s an ethos that helped Tendo earn the No. 20 spot on our ranking of America’s Best Startup Employers 2024.

To determine the list, now in its fifth iteration, Forbes partnered with market research firm Statista to identify 3,000 privately-held companies that are headquartered in the United States, employ more than 50 people, and were founded between 2014 and 2021. (Each startup must also have been started from scratch, as opposed to being a spinoff of a larger corporation). The companies were then evaluated based on three primary criteria: company reputation, employee satisfaction and growth. Millions of data points were used to determine each company’s score, and the 500 startups with the highest scores made our final list. (For more on the methodology, see below.)

Tendo is far from the only company that landed on this year’s list in large part due to its culture. Rising to No. 1 this year (up from No. 3 last year) was, appropriately enough, Our Next Energy, known as ONE. The four-year-old company, which was founded on the mission of doubling the battery range of electric vehicles, prides itself on its “no ego” culture and a practice of welcoming ideas from anyone—whether entry level or senior leadership. Even after weathering a workforce reduction in November, company morale has stayed strong. “All of us took that as a challenge to not let that setback define us moving forward,” says Dan Pierce, ONE’s vice president of communications. “You can choose to let those moments knock you down or not.”

ONE employees chose to power through—and reached their first major goalpost at the end of 2023, when their Gemini battery hit 608 miles on a single charge. (The typical battery range for electric vehicles is 300 miles.) “We’re starting to see the fruits of our labor,” says Pierce.

In addition to ONE, three other startups in the energy and resources sector nabbed a spot in the top 10: Electric Hydrogen (No. 3), Intersect Power (No. 4) and Lunar Energy (No. 10; up from No. 54 last year). Still, the industry that dominated the list was business products and software services, with startups in this category representing more than 20% of the ranking. Topping the list in this sector was Cribl (No. 6; up from No. 7 last year), which offers companies a data engine for IT and security. The startup, founded in 2018, is another remote-first firm that’s found ways to help employees feel connected.

For example, each year, all Cribl employees travel to an offsite location for a company kickoff meeting for several days of learning and socializing. There is also a quarterly recognition program (in addition to impromptu spot bonuses), designed to “highlight the employees who are doing really great work and make sure that they get seen,” says Clint Sharp, Cribl’s CEO and co-founder. Employees also frequent a slew of Slack channels dedicated to non-work topics, which serve as virtual water coolers. “We’ve got a food channel where everybody posts about what they’re cooking, and there are people talking about music making, and fitness,” notes Sharp. “You can get to know people who may or may not be in your department, and I think it’s an awful lot of fun, too.”

Employees at Devoted Health (No. 5), a healthcare insurance platform launched in 2017, have likewise mastered the art of connecting with others while working remotely. Consider Victoria Tesh, a senior member service guide who answers Devoted members’ calls and helps them navigate healthcare problems. She recalls the day when one member was deeply frustrated because her scooter was delayed and she desperately needed it to handle daily tasks. “The member was suffering, and I was able to reach out to the provider to coordinate what needed to be done,” says Tesh. “It was a great feeling to be able to resolve the issue and call her back within 24 hours. She started crying. You could just feel that relief.”

Then there’s Wiz (No. 18)—the cloud security company launched in 2020 that’s been dubbed one of the fastest-growing software startups ever—which is appealing for many employees (aka Wizards) because it offers the opportunity to work and learn at the epicenter of cloud technology, cybersecurity and AI. As Kelly Russell, Wiz’s chief human resources officer, notes, it helps that Wiz—with offices in multiple locations, including New York and Israel—was founded by “proven successful leaders … and it’s just an amazing rocket ship.” Plus, with its CEO Assaf Rappaport declaring Wiz’s intent to go public, who wouldn’t want to come along for that ride?

For the full list of America’s Best Startup Employers 2024, click here.

Methodology

To create the list of America’s Best Startup Employers 2024, Forbes partnered with market research firm Statista to identify 3,000 privately-held companies headquartered in the U.S. that employ more than 50 people and were founded between 2014 and 2021. (Each startup must also have been started from scratch, as opposed to being a spinoff of a larger corporation.) Companies were then evaluated on three primary criteria: company reputation, employee satisfaction and growth.

To assess employer reputation, Statista reviewed articles, blogs and social media posts about each employer, searching for such phrases as “corporate culture” and “employee engagement.” Text analysis was used to categorize those phrases as positive, negative or neutral. Statista evaluated employee satisfaction through online reviews, employee retention rates, and company policies relating to topics such as diversity and inclusion, parental leave, and workplace flexibility. Growth was assessed by examining the organizations’ website traffic, job openings, and head counts over a two-year period.

Ultimately, millions of data points were used to determine the company scores, and the 500 startups with the highest scores made our final ranking of America’s Best Startup Employers 2024.

As with all Forbes lists, companies do not pay any fee to be considered. For questions about this list, please contact listdesk [at] Forbes.com.