Find startups before they're famous
Some of the best places to work haven't made a list yet. DonutApply watches the public signs that a company is taking off, and ranks companies by how fast they are rising, with the evidence one click away.
Rising companies Pro
Find the good ones early
Some of the best employers aren't famous yet. DonutApply ranks companies by how fast they're rising, with the evidence attached.
- Fresh funding. SEC filings and funding news, counted once per round.
- Real backers. Who funded them, and Y Combinator.
- Your own tiers. Rank S to C, then filter Browse by them. Free on every plan.
A ranked list of fictional rising companies. One company raises a round, its score climbs, it moves to the top of the list, the person sets its tier to A, and an Evidence drawer opens listing its sources: a Form D filing, funding news and two top backers.
How a company earns its score
Nobody types these in. DonutApply reads public records on a schedule, adds them up per company, and keeps the source of each fact so you can check it.
- It reads the sources. SEC filings for private fundraising rounds, funding news, the Y Combinator directory, the monthly “Who is hiring?” threads on Hacker News, the portfolio pages of well-known venture firms and a few curated company lists. When a company posts no salaries, the Department of Labor's public H-1B wage filings stand in for pay, if it has filed enough of them.
- It counts the company's own postings. DonutApply already collects open US jobs. For each company it compares the engineering roles first seen this month with the two months before, so a team that is speeding up looks different from one that is steady.
- It scores five kinds of evidence. Backers, a recent round, hiring pace, pay, and everything else (lists, Y Combinator, Hacker News). Each one is capped, so no single signal can put a company at the top alone.
- It shows its work. Open a company and the score comes apart into its parts, each beside the fact behind it and the latest evidence.
A fictional company, Northfield Labs. Five rows fill in one after another as evidence arrives: two top backers, a $40M Series A filed two days ago, nine new engineering roles against three before, posted pay up to $210k, and a Y Combinator batch with two Hacker News posts. The score ring climbs to 67 and the company is marked Rising.
What the score does and doesn't know
A fast-hiring giant isn't a rising company, so size counts against it. Hiring and pay are both discounted for a company with hundreds of open engineering roles or thousands of people. A funding round counts in full for about six months and fades to nothing by two years. A company nothing is known about scores zero, not a middling number.
It is a measure of momentum, built around US companies and US postings. It doesn't predict whether a company will last.
It reads
- Public filings, news and directories
- The company's own open postings, as DonutApply already collects them
- Stated pay, where a posting gives a range
It doesn't
- Judge culture, management or whether you'd like the work
- Guess a salary for a company that states none and has filed no wages
- Contact a company or apply on your behalf
Some companies get a closer look
For rising companies, and ones that just raised a large round, DonutApply can run a research pass that searches the web and writes a short summary with sources, a suggested tier and rough total compensation. A claim it can't tie to a page it read is dropped.
It runs in batches, not for every company, so a newly rising one may not have it yet. A suggested tier is only a suggestion: nothing is tiered until you accept it.
Rank them your way
Give any company a tier from S to C, or take the one DonutApply shows, which comes from a hand-kept list for well-known employers and otherwise from the pay its postings state. The tiers are aimed at tech, AI and quant roles. Browse can then show only a tier and above, and “Hide company” removes an employer you've ruled out.
Free: browse every company by name, open tech roles and stated pay, set your own tiers, hide companies, and open a company's page with its postings.
Pro ($19 a month): the Rising list and the score, funding, backers, H-1B pay, company research and the Rising filter in Browse.
Questions about rising companies
How does DonutApply decide a company is rising?
It adds up public evidence: who backs it, how recently and how much it raised, how fast it is opening engineering roles, what it pays, and a few other signs such as Y Combinator and Hacker News hiring posts. Each part is capped, and large companies are discounted so their size doesn't pass for growth.
Does a high score mean it's a good place to work?
No. It says a company has momentum, not that its culture, management or pay suit you. Open the company's page to read the evidence and its postings, then decide.
Which companies are covered?
Mostly US companies. The sources lean toward venture-backed tech, so the list is strongest for engineering, AI and similar roles. A company with no public trace yet won't show up as rising.
What does it cost?
Browsing companies by name, open roles and stated pay, and setting your own tiers, is free. The Rising list, the score, funding, backers, H-1B pay and company research are part of Pro, $19 a month.
Donut apply so hard.
Go take a nap.
We’ll keep looking.
Fresh jobs keep arriving while you sleep. When you're up, the forms fill in minutes and the tracker keeps itself tidy.
Start on Free; Pro is $19 a month when you want it.