Startup investing can be hard and frustrating, but it’s a lot simpler when investors have more focus. Like other assets such as stocks and bonds, there are criteria that can help you narrow the choices among startups to buy.

Republic is one of the top online equity crowdfunding platforms. Apart from strict due diligence for selecting which startups to appear on its platform, there is the choice of finding investment opportunities based on criteria such as most funded, recently launched, closing soon, and most traction last week.

For this article, I chose to list seven startups that gained the most traction last week. Further due diligence is suggested, and risk tolerance should be always within your range of investment philosophy criteria.

Here are the 7 best startups you can buy on Republic right now:

• BitGreen
• KingsCrowd
• GRIT BXNG At Home
• Dryvebox
• Koning
• Cortex
• KAIYO Rooftop Bar & Restaurant

As always with startups, investors should do their due diligence and only invest money they can afford to lose in speculative plays.

Startup Investing Ideas: BitGreen

What can crypto do for sustainability? Or for climate change? BitGreen is a DeFi-native protocol, built with the purpose of enabling climate and sustainability finance and building everything related to ESG investing on blockchain technology.

What is impact investing? It is investment in socially-conscious assets, and covers infrastructure, development and adaptation of solutions to fight severe problems such as rising seas. The main problem that BitGreen wants to solve is the lack of capital needed to address climate change now. As the cryptocurrency market has boomed in 2021, BitGreens’ protocol can help developers to create blockchain applications that will help impact investing projects with a focus on ESG principles and DeFi.

There are two main groups that BitGreen targets. First, people who already have invested in the cryptocurrency market and second, consumers who advocate green living.

The business model relies on B2B and B2B2C. The company earns revenue from the transaction fees of applications made to support impact investing and also from the scalability of the network over time. With Impact Investing estimated at $715 billion in 2020 and growing at a 20% CAGR (compound annual rate growth), plus the hype of the crypto and DeFi markets, BitGreen can help create numerous impact projects that could benefit from implementing blockchain technology.

The minimum investment in BitGreen on Republic is $100. The maximum funding goal of $5 million has been reached but investors can join the waitlist.

KingsCrowd

KingsCrowd is a financial data platform for the online private market. Data is plentiful for public traded stocks, but there is an information gap when it comes to analyzing data and performing due diligence for private markets.

KingsCrowd boasts patent-pending technology and plenty of traction, with more than 100,000 subscribers and revenue growth more than 20X in 2020. It is considered a one-stop source to find, identify, and research companies in-depth before you decide to invest.

Building a platform to provide quantitative analysis for analyzing private markets is not an easy task. KingsCrowd has thousands of companies in its database and continues growing data points daily, providing industry analysis, market-level analytics, a portfolio aggregation tool, educational resources, and more features.

The business model uses three main channels: subscriptions to individual investors, institutional investors from 2021, and resale partnerships such as brokerage firms connecting directly with their clients to inform them about online private offerings.

The minimum amount of investment in KingsCrowd on Republic is $1,000.

GRIT BXNG At Home

How can a company change the fitness industry? What about investing in digital at-home fitness technology?

GRIT is a company with experience in the fitness industry and technology and an opportunity to disrupt the estimated to worth $59B online fitness market. There are five key reasons why GRIT considers this is doable.

The first is that online fitness is a hot fitness trend and has a massive $59 billion opportunity. Second, GRIT EPIQ is an all-in-one online fitness technology that has been designed by Eric Villency, named by Inc. Magazine as “one of the most influential designers”. Third, there is a strong belief that GRIT’s product is a “world-class online fitness product.”

Fourth, GRIT plans to change the connected fitness market by a combination of data and information on the performance of its users. Users will have the opportunity to get customized workout recommendations to achieve their fitness goals. Finally, the fifth element is the experienced management team.

GRIT BXNG At Home was created amid the pandemic to provide a home digital fitness experience. This at-home connected fitness technology is also powered by artificial intelligence.

The minimum amount of investment in GRIT BXNG At Home on Republic is $297.

Dryvebox

Have you ever played golf? It’s a fun game, but you need plenty of time and good weather to get good at the game.

Dryvebox solves the main accessibility problems of playing golf, from finding time to not worrying about buying the expensive necessary to enjoy the game in full. So what is Dryvebox?

In a sentence, patented mobile golf simulators let people play golf without boundaries, whether time or place related. It is a complete and fun way to get individuals started playing golf. You can have lessons, play and practice yourself, and the service offers events to participate in. Playing golf on Dryvebox is itself an experience worth living, as it includes the world’s best golf courses — without having to travel across several continents to get there.

The business model has three different sources of revenue. When users learn, they pay a rate of $80 to $200 per hour to learn from top instructors. When users choose to play there is a fixed hourly rate of $50. And when users want to party then they can organize private events or golf tournaments starting at $350+ per hour. There is also a monthly subscription service starting at $250 that offers discounts for frequent users, and the revenue streams are soon to be enriched by sales of apparel, equipment, and ad space.

The minimum investment in Dryvebox on Republic is $150.

Koning

Koning provides a commercialized breast-only CT scanner for cancer detection, as “breast cancer is the most diagnosed cancer in women in the US and the second leading cause of cancer death in American women.”

The problem that Koning’s Breast CT (KBCT) medical device solves is multidimensional. Most mammograms miss more than 30% of cancers due to their use of 2D mammogram technology, which can be fatal for patients whose cancer is only detected at later stages.

Koning provides high-contrast 3D images, avoids completely the painful compression and there is a very rapid 10-second exposure to radiation. The KBCT breast imaging medical device is considered the only one available on the market offering a 360-degree scanning angle technology.

Koning has a global presence in Australia, North America and Asia and estimates revenue of $16.6 million by the end of 2021. The company has a plethora of patents and most importantly, FDA-certification to provide commercial diagnostic use in the healthcare industry.

There are multiple revenue streams, from software sales to service and parts fees. The company aims for its KBCT device to dominate breast imaging, as it can help in breast cancer early disease detection and effective treatment.

The minimum investment in Koning on Republic is $100.

Cortex

Cortex provides advertising solutions through an enterprise SAAS platform that uses artificial intelligence to help them optimize visual content, photos and videos. Every year about $600 billion is spent on advertising by the world’s largest brands, based largely on trial-and-error strategies to attract consumers and increase their sales.

But what if there was a solution to help advertisers understand exactly what type of content to make to achieve marketing success? That is what Cortex’s technology is all about, based on artificial intelligence analyzing tons of visual content and providing insights on what is working for marketing campaigns and what is not. The company has traction, as Cortex expects to have more than 5000 users in the next 12 months and revenue growth of 10X in Q4 2022 compared to the $300,000 run rate in Q3 2021.

The business model can fit the needs of every advertiser, with annual subscriptions ranging from $2,000 to $30,000. The market for global image advertising of $589 billion presents a large space to explore and gain share. In marketing and advertising optimizing campaigns is the key to success and Cortex’s technology can help make advertising less risky investment enhancing the ROI (return on investment) of advertisers. This is the main goal.

The minimum investment in Cortex on Republic is $100.

KAIYO Rooftop Bar & Restaurant

Investing in owning a restaurant requires significant capital, time, and commitment. What if you could instead invest in owning shares of a restaurant business to get the taste and feel of it?

KAIYO Rooftop Bar & Restaurant is an investment opportunity in just that, a rooftop bar & restaurant in a newly built San Francisco Hyatt hotel. The restaurant has several advantages.

First is the unique Nikkei cuisine, a mix of Japanese and Peruvian tastes. Second, its prime location near the San Francisco Giants stadium and downtown. As the stadium is not only used for sports but also several special events such as concerts, the KAIYO Rooftop Bar & Restaurant can attract a lot of customers targeting millennials being the “new gastronomical sensation in the country.”

The business model projects annual sales of $6.7M million with a 6% yearly growth. Revenue will be generated by food, beverages but also from organizing corporate events. And while opening in November 2021 amid the pandemic doesn’t make for a representative first year of operations, 2022 is expected to be a strong year of operating performance.

There are plans to expand the KAIYŌ brand shortly to other cities, and countries, major markets such as London, Tokyo, New York to name a few.

The minimum investment in KAIYO Rooftop Bar & Restaurant on Republic is  $300.

On the date of publication, Stavros Georgiadis, CFA  did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.

Stavros Georgiadis is a CFA charter holder, an Equity Research Analyst, and an Economist. He focuses on U.S. stocks and has his own stock market blog at thestockmarketontheinternet.com/. He has written in the past various articles for other publications and can be reached on Twitter and on LinkedIn.