Network World just published an article 10 Big Data Startups to Watch.
"The startups... were chosen based on a mix of third-party validation (VC funding, named customers), experience
(pedigree of the management team), and market potential (how unique is the product; how much pent-up
demand is there for this sort of solution; how well are they positioned competitively)."
The companies listed include Sumo Logic, Ayasdi, Feedzai, Cloud Physics, BloomReach, Altiscale, Pursway, PlaceIQ, MemSQL, and Couchbase.