CNBC is now accepting nominations for the 2023 Disruptor 50 list, our annual survey of the most revolutionary enterprise capital-backed firms which can be leveraging disruptive technology to address growing economic and consumer challenges.
The deadline for submissions is Friday, February 17 at 11:59 PM EST.
All independent, private firms established after January 1, 2008 are eligible, and any company founder or director, investor in the company, or any of their communications representatives can are available in and apply.
Corporations that made last yr’s Disruptor 50 list will proceed to face tough conditions in 2023 as persistently higher rates of interest and ongoing hikes by the Federal Reserve could push the economy into recession. The IPO market collapsed step-by-step: only three Disruptor 50 firms went public in 2022, compared to a record 20 firms a yr earlier.
The pullbacks forced private firms to reckon with foaming valuations that defined an prolonged tech boom during which a few of the more distinguished Disruptor 50 firms, reminiscent of Uber, Coin base, Twilio and Snowflake finally got here to light.
Stripe, which topped the Disruptor 50 2020 list as the pandemic accelerated the transition to online payments, slashed its internal valuation by 28% in July, from $95 billion to $74 billion. Last month, one other Disruptor 50 fintech company, Checkout.com, lowered its valuation from $40 billion to $11 billion. Klarna raised $6.7 billion in funding last yr, an 85% discount from its previous $46 billion valuation.
Instacart also took many hits, reducing its valuation from $39 billion to $24 billion in May, then to $15 billion in July and at last to $10 billion in December.
But it surely was staff who were hit hardest by these major cutbacks: not less than a third of Disruptor 50 2022 firms announced layoffs last yr, signaling weaker times.
![The tech wreck shows the wave effects in the start-up ecosystem after layoffs](https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/107160430-16699994681669999466-26923221475-1080pnbcnews.jpg?v=1670001440&w=750&h=422&vtcrop=y)
Still, history has shown that tough times are usually not enough to stop the next great idea from being realized. In truth, a few of the most resilient startups were born in difficult economic conditions. The Great Recession of 2008 created Disruptor 50 firms that fundamentally modified the way people live and work, including Airbnb, Unit, PinterestCloudera, Slack and others.
This yr’s Disruptor 50 list, fulfilling its original mission of identifying the next generation of huge listed firms, could also be the most important yet. Nominees will undergo a comprehensive and rigorous screening and scoring process across a wide selection of quantitative and qualitative criteria, including scalability, revenue and user growth, in addition to workforce diversity.
An advisory board of leading thinkers in innovation and entrepreneurship will weigh in on the quantitative criteria, while the CNBC editorial team will read the submissions and make a qualitative assessment of every nominee.
The 2023 honorees might be notified in April and the list might be published in May on CNBC’s TV and digital platforms.
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