10 Maryland Startups to Watch in 2016

Here at DC Inno, we're looking ahead at 2016 and for the storylines, companies and entrepreneurs that have the potential to make big moves and break headlines. Maryland's tech startup ecosystem, different from it's neighbors in the District and Virginia, is quickly changing and growing in its own right.

Specifically, Maryland is home to a burgeoning set of health-tech, cybersecurity and cloud data service companies with great potential. This year, for example, brought the $1.2 billion dollar acquisition of data visualization firm Virtustream, which was also backed by a number of prominent local venture capital firms. In preparing for a new year, here are some of the top Maryland startups we're watching in tech:

ZeroFox (Baltimore, Md.)

• Investors: Highland Capital Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Genacast Ventures and Core Capital
• What they do: social media cybersecurity and threat intelligence platform
• Why the are worth watching: in early December, cybersecurity startup ZeroFox scooped an impressive $27 million Series B funding round. The money will be used primarily to accelerate sales by helping hire more sales professionals and in assisting new product development efforts. ZeroFOX CEO James Foster told the Baltimore Sun at the time, "I think our investors want to see more value and really unleash the value of the company. The full expectation is we're on to something here that's significant and meaningful, and they want to give us enough room to run." Going into 2016 with fresh funding and renewed confidence from prominent local VC firms Core Capital and NEA, ZeroFox will aim take the next steps toward becoming Baltimore's premier cybersecurity franchise.

Localist (Silver Spring, Md.) 

• Investors: undisclosed
• What they do: a unique event technology company that develops white-label, marketing-centric calendar software
• Why the are worth watching: having only raised a small seed round of $300,000 in 2009 from unnamed angel investors, this startup has been self-supported for most of its existence. Localist was long based in Baltimore and was an original member of charm city's once burgeoning tech startup scene. But over the course of several years, CEO Mykel Nahorniak (pictured) told DC Inno that he found Baltimore’s lack of developer talent and its “fragmented” incubator scene, among other things, to be red flags. He chose to relocate to Silver Spring, just a stone's throw from D.C., to be closer to a larger developer talent pool.

Read more at DC Inno

from http://baltimoretech.org/news/10-maryland-startups-to-watch-in-2016/