Tilt

Students use Tilt, a Kickstarter-meets-Venmo payments app, to organize frat parties and weekend trips, inviting all of their friends to chip in and spreading the app to new campuses. In the past year, the company has grown by 41 percent every month on college campuses, and 350 percent by the number of projects funded. The San Francisco-based startup is betting that this viral demand will help it graduate along with its fiercely loyal users, turning the platform into the next Facebook or Snapchat. Co-founder James Beshara, a Texan whose post-college nonprofit job turned into a stint as a South African debt collector, soon learned how to adapt to a changing market. He started Tilt in Austin as Crowdtilt, a charity-minded crowdfunding platform, but quickly saw the greater demand from young people looking for a better way to send and receive money. "It's meant to be bite-size, simplified, kind of like a Twitter for crowdfunding," he says. Investors are hooked: Tilt has raised some $67.1 million from high-profile backers including Sean Parker, Andreessen Horowitz, Goodwater Capital, and SV Angel.
Note: All data as of 1/31/16