Check out Oakland's Rising Stars in emerging tech

These five startups embody the growing tech hub east of the San Francisco Bay

Oakland has become an increasingly attractive venue to establish roots as a tech startup. That's why Vator today is hosting its Splash Spring entrepreneur festival in the gorgeous city east of the bay.

There are many reasons emerging tech companies increasingly choose to set up shop in Oakland. Most people will assume it comes down to the fact that real estate in San Francisco and the Valley have skyrocketed—and that's certainly a contributing factor.

"npm, Inc. went into 2015 with 11 employees and came into 2016 with 27," wrote npm, Inc. CEO Isaac Z. Schlueter in his Rising Stars application. "This increase in people meant that we were tripping over one another in our old office, so we moved into a much larger space on Lake Merritt. If you come to an Oakland Node School event, you can enjoy our couches and coffee while you learn how to write JavaScript packages."

That's not to say companies like npm don't have any choice. Fresh off an $8 million Series A round led by Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP), it's clear that npm has the means to establish headquarters in San Francisco, but it's not just about money.

Many companies choose to set up shop in Oakland because—get this—they actually want to be based in Oakland! Whether it's something about the city's culture or history, or something else entirely, it's clear that a new wave of companies has found something ineffable but important about the other city by the bay. If you're at Vator Splash today, I'm sure you'll learn something about the city and what makes it increasingly attractive to entrepreneurs and investors.

Without further ado, here are Oakland's Rising Stars:

Saint Harridan is capturing the gender-bending youth and adults who are bucking the system of only two genders. The company designs, manufactures, and sells clothing directly to the consumer. Saint Harridan has a run rate of ~$500k, and is growing at ~20% MoM for the last four months.

npm, Inc. is the package manager for JavaScript, and the world’s largest software registry. Every month, more than four million developers use npm to find, share, and reuse code — over 250,000 packages, downloaded over one billion times per week — and assemble it in powerful new ways.

The company maintains the open source registry as a free service, develops tools and services to help teams share and distribute their code, and brings open source workflows and tools into the world’s largest companies.

Qeyno Labs is an inclusive innovation company and leading provider of futuristic learning experiences that create magical opportunity for youth, their families, and their community. Qeyno is the home of Hackathon Academy, the company's flagship "popup school" that prepares high potential youth in low opportunity settings to become next generation developers, designers, and innovators in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art Design, and Mathematics). Through its labs, Qeyno is mindfully committed to lifting systemic barriers to a child's greatest innovation moments.

Hackathons gather together technologists (coders), artists (designers), and problem solvers (innovators) to brainstorm, design, and build web or mobile apps that can change the world, create a business, or both! Qeyno’s mission is to transform children's lives and give them the power to transform their worlds through social innovation, education, and technology.

Clef replaces usernames and passwords online. The company recognizes users by their smartphone instead of anything you have to remember or type to make logging in faster, safer, and much easier. 

The New York Times describes logging in with Clef as "magical" and with dozens of sites adding Clef login every day, the experience is spreading to more users every day.

Angeloop offers startups business intelligence dashboards, cap table management tool and an easy and secure way to collaborate with their investors. 

The company's investor users manage their private market portfolio and track any valuations changes, create reports and have a front row seat to their investments performance.