Cohesity

founder: mohit aron (ceo) Equity raised: $160 million Estimated 2017 revenue: $50 million

Lead investors: artis ventures, gv, Qualcomm ventures, sequoia capital, wing venture capital

What it does: makes systems that help companies store and recover backup data like inventory logs and personnel records. founder and ceo aron, 44, struck gold with his first unicorn, data-storage provider nutanix, which he launched in 2009 and took public seven years later. today, nutanix has a market cap of $3.3 billion, making aron’s 9% stake worth $290 million. an indian immigrant, he earned a ph.d. in computer science at rice, then worked as a lead developer on google’s file system storage product. in early 2013 he launched cohesity, based in santa clara, california. the company’s 300 customers pay an average of $225,000 for its product, which includes a combination of servers and software.