slack stewart butterfield why you should watch slack is a communication app that lets workplaces use a group chat room private messaging features and file sharing its completely taken the business world by storm and is one of the fastest growing enterprise apps of all time slack will likely only get bigger next year funding 180 million from andreessen horowitz accel partners the socialcapital partnership google ventures and kleiner perkins caufield byers founders stewart butterfield eric costello cal henderson serguei mourachov headspace andy puddicombe why you should watch companies across silicon valley are embracing meditation as a way to help employees unlock productivity headspace is taking advantage of that trend by offering mobile and web platforms that let you meditate on your own time headspace has over a million users in 150 countries funding 4 million in seed funding but no investors have been announced founders andy puddicombe richard pierson wish peter szulczewski why you should watch wish is a mobile shopping startup that looks like pinterest and only shows you the stuff you want to buy techcrunch says the startup is in talks to raise roughly 100 million at a valuation of around 1 billion wish ceo peter szulczewski said we want to be google adwords for the retailer funding 787 million from founders fund legend capital ggv capital jerry yang and jared leto founders peter szulczewski danny zhang casper philip krim what it is casper landed a 131 million series a this summer and has been growing ever since the company wants to take the traditionally convoluted process of buying a mattress and streamline it for the web the startups clean informative website and slick ordering system has already facilitated thousands of orders investors 15 millionfrom new enterprise associates lerer hippeau ventures kevin colleran and sv angel founders philip krim jeff chapin gabriel flateman luke sherwin neil parikh instacart apoorva mehta why you should watch with instacart you can order groceries from your phone or online and have them delivered to your apartment in less than an hour instacart operates in 10 cities right now most locations offer food and household essentials from costco harris teeter and whole foods in december instacart raised a huge 100 million round of funding funding 1548 millionfrom andreessen horowitz kleiner perkins caufield byers khosla ventures sequoia capital sam altman and aaron levie founders apoorva mehta max mullen brandon leonardo dots paul murphy why you should watch dots originally born out of betaworks is a new type of gaming studio the companys initial game dots was a gigantic hit garnering over one million users in a week after their launch in may 2013 they followed up with a sequel game twodots this summer and last week spun out of betaworks entirely after closing a 10 million round of funding from tencent and greycroft investors 10 millionfrom greycroft partners tencent northzone ventures and crunchfund founders paul murphy patrick moberg jet marc lore why you should watch marc lore formerly the ceo of