Ripple and Zipline named in the annual ranking of the world’s most innovative startups
Two KBW Ventures portfolio companies are listed in the prestigious CNBC annual 2020 “Disruptor 50” list. Zipline and Ripple were chosen for the competitive ranking from a substantial 1,355 nominees. This year’s assessment process also included an extra step in the selection process: how companies were impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.
This is the second year running that Zipline, operators of the world’s only drone delivery system at national scale to send urgent medicines and biological materials needed for medical facilities including blood and vaccines, has been named to the Disruptor 50.
Ripple, founded in 2012, uses blockchain technology and digital assets to enable financial institutions to send money across borders, instantly, reliably and for fractions of a penny. The company enables banks, payment providers, digital asset exchanges, and corporates to send money globally using advanced blockchain technology.
The “Disruptor 50” ranking highlights innovative startups exploring business niches that thus far have gone unanswered and have the potential to up-end an existing industry. The methodology used to select the venture capital-backed enterprises includes nominee evaluation qualifying the businesses as “developing revolutionary new technology into scalable business models.”
To qualify as a nominee for the “Disruptor 50”, companies must have been founded after January 1, 2005, and were required to submit a bevy of qualitative and quantitative information. The information required for the nomination included recent company developments, a list of the key technologies driving the business, detailed sales, and user growth.
The data sets are evaluated by the 55 members of the Advisory Council and more than 50 members of CNBC’s editorial staff, who then assign holistic scores that are used to generate the final list and ranking order.
