Companies today need to distill massive amounts of data--say, a bank’s withdrawals or deposits--to find trends and make predictions. Consider how a bank knows when to raise red flags if odd purchase behavior gets registered. Businesses hire data scientists to turn copious amounts of data into actual knowledge that they can make decisions with. That’s where Pachyderm’s open-source software comes in. It offers version control and gives users a snapshot of how data looked at any given time--an especially valuable tool in today’s GDPR age, when citizens increasingly have the right to ask how their data is being used. 

Although the core package is open source and free to use, many businesses pay for the enterprise edition of the software, purchased with a yearly plan, which provides increased security features, as well as advanced analytics and support from the Pachyderm team. Joey Zwicker and Joe Doliner, Pachyderm’s co-founders, have raised more than $12 million from investors like Benchmark, Blumberg Capital and Susa Ventures. -- Talib Visram

When Shelby Wild was working as a stylist in New York City, she was constantly spending money on hair care products that never fulfilled the promise of healthy looking hair. Wild was using as many as six products at a time to conceive a wavy hairdo. "The products that were effective were incredibly toxic, and the more natural variations didn’t really work," Wild says. That's when she realized there needed to be a simpler solution to achieving effortlessly healthy looking hair--so she made it herself. Her company, Playa, produces a product line that includes shampoos and conditioners that are toxins free. She adds that all Playa goods are made with organic herbal ingredients that are never tested on animals. Currently, Playa products are sold internationally in the United States, Germany, Canada, and Australia through the company's online website as well as through its dominant retailer, Sephora. Playa expects to book $6.5 million in revenue by the end of 2019. -- Malak Saleh

Maggie Winters had been photographing weddings through her years at high school and in college, mostly on the weekends, and traditional ceremonies started to feel highly choreographed and cookie-cutter, she says. There were exceptions. The smallest weddings, which just a few family members and a couple of friends attended, felt spontaneous and light, and mercifully void of stress. With this in mind, in 2014, she hatched a plan to host tiny weddings in the Washington, D.C., area. She roped in her then-boyfriend, Stephen Gaudaen, to officiate, and they'd provide a small cake and a scrappy venue--say, an art gallery, brewery, or vintage shop--for $2,900 to $4,500. A year into building the business, Winters and Gaudaen married--at the site of their first Pop! Wed ceremony. --Christine Lagorio-Chafkin

Shaan Patel had his heart set on attending a good college and eventually heading to medical school, but he didn't get the SAT score necessary for admission. He locked himself in a library the summer before his senior year of high school and taught himself how to ace the exam. Once he did, he knew he was on to something. While Patel still dreamed of becoming a dermatologist, he also now wanted to bring his test-preparation knowledge to others. Today, his 30-person company, which started from a single offline SAT-prep course in Las Vegas, hosts 10,000 off- and online students annually. They pay Prep Expert anywhere from $1,099 to $1,399 to prepare for standardized tests including the SAT, ACT, and GMAT. One of the defining moments for Prep Expert was when Patel appeared on Shark Tank in 2016. Mark Cuban agreed to give him $250,000 in exchange for 20 percent equity and gave the company a boost in publicity. Patel is a dermatologist and the author of 15 test-prep books. He even co-authored an entrepreneurship guide for children with Cuban. --Emily Canal