The most successful companies to come out of Y Combinator

1 - Airbnb - $31bn valuation
2 - Stripe - $20bn
3 - Cruise - $14bn
4 - Dropbox - >$10bn
5 - Instacart - $7.6bn
Source:  Techcrunch, 17th Oct 2018
(Link has top 20, with current valuations)

Six of the world's 10 most valuable companies are tech companies

Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, Facebook, Exxon Mobil, Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan, Tencent
Source:  Bloomberg, 6th April 2017

Axel Springer paid $343m for 88% of Business Insider

"German publisher Axel Springer, which lost out to Japan's Nikkei in the race to buy the Financial Times two months ago, is paying $343 million for 88% of the online publication.
Axel Springer already owned a stake of about 9%. Tuesday's deal values the eight-year-old Business Insider at $442 million, one of the highest sums ever for a standalone digital publisher.
Amazon (AMZN, Tech30) CEO Jeff Bezos, who invested in the startup several years ago, will retain a small stake. Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million.
Axel Springer is a publishing giant in Europe, with holdings including the tabloid Bild and the newspaper Die Welt. It has been on the hunt for online properties."
Source:  CNN, 29th September 2015

8 companies from the Y Combinator accelerator programme are now worth more than $1bn

"Total "valuation" of all YC companies: >$65 billion
Total money raised by all YC companies: >$7 billion
Number of YC companies worth more than $1 billion: 8 [1]
Number of YC companies worth more than $100 million: >40
Number of companies funded by YC so far: ~940
Number of companies funded by YC that have dissolved: 177
Number of companies in the last batch: 107
Number of hardware + biotech + healthcare companies in the last batch: 32
Number of companies we offered to fund yesterday for the first YC Fellowship: 33
[1] This includes Twitch, which Amazon bought for ~970MM plus an earn-out."

Source:  Blog post from y Combinator, 26th August 2015

An average of 8 billion dollar US-based technology companies were created each year between 2005 & 2013

"1) We found 84 U.S.-based companies belong to what we call the “unicorn club,” a jaw-dropping 115% increase from our last post. The increase is driven largely by “paper unicorns” – private companies that have not yet had a “liquidity event.” But, these companies are still a super-rarity: our list is just .14% of venture-backed consumer and enterprise tech startups.
2) On average, eight unicorns were born per year in the past decade (versus four in the 2003-2013 era). There’s not yet a super-unicorn ($100 billion-plus in value) born from the 2005-2015 decade, but there are now nine “decacorns” ($10 billion-plus in value), 3x our last post.
3) Consumer-oriented companies drive the majority of value in our set: more companies and higher average value per company. They raise a lot of private capital.
4) Enterprise-oriented companies are fewer and raise less private capital; and increased enterprise fundraising has reduced their return on private dollars raised.
5) In terms of business models, e-commerce companies drive the majority of value in our set, but have the lowest “capital efficiency.” Enterprise and audience companies have decreased in market share of our set, while SaaS companies have grown in market share significantly. We’ve also added a new category: Internet of Things/consumer electronics.
6) It’s a long journey, beyond vesting periods: it has taken ~7 years on average before a “liquidity event” for the 39% who have ‘exited’ – not including the 61% of our list that is still private. The capital efficiency of these “private unicorns” is surprisingly low, which will likely impact future returns for founders, investors and employees.
7) Take heart, “old people” of Silicon Valley: Companies with educated, tech-savvy, experienced 30-something, co-founding teams with history together have built the most successes. Twenty-something founders and successful pivots are the minority; dedicated CEOs who are able to scale their companies for the long haul are not.
8) San Francisco maintains dominance as the new epicenter of the Bay Area’s most valuable tech companies; cities like NYC and L.A. are growing in importance
9) Immigrants play a huge role in the founding and value creation of today’s tech companies.  We wonder how much more value could be created if it were easier to get a work visa.
10) There’s still too little diversity at the top. There is movement in a positive direction on gender from a zero base; and not enough data on race and other underrepresented groups."

Source:  Techcrunch, 18th July 2015

Note - Earlier analysis from 2013

Spotify is worth more than the entire US recording industry

"Sources: Spotify valuation ($8.4 billion) calculated by Wall Street Journal, based on an upcoming, $400 million+ capital round led by Goldman Sachs..  US-based recording valuation for 2014 ($6.972 billion) published this month by recording trade group RIAA."
From the comments:
"The valuation of a company is based on expected future profits. In the case of an established business, these are estimated on the basis of current profits adjusted upwards or downwards according to the market’s judgement of future trends, and discounted for time and risk (which means that possible earnings far in the future have little present value). Current earnings (profits) are usually only a small proportion (maybe 10%) of current revenue. So expected future earnings over, say, a 10 year period might well be of the same order of magnitude as current revenue.
In the case of a speculative start-up venture like Spotify, where there are no current profits, the valuation is little more than guesswork. A valuation of $8 billion implies that the market is expecting future profits of the order of $800 million a year over a substantial period in the future."
Also - note that it's comparing a global valuation to a US one.

Source:  Digital Music News, 19th April 2015

2014 was the biggest year for IPOs since 2000

"Big companies weren't shy about going public in 2014.
"With 273 IPOs, 2014 was the most active period of issuance since 406 companies went public in 2000," noted the folks at Renaissance Capital IPO Intelligence. "It was the second year of uninterrupted IPO activity, up 23% over 2013, due to a doubling of biotech issuance."
According to Renaissance Capital, the health care sector led the way with a whopping 100 IPOs. Think biotech stocks.
"Despite the higher volume, health care proceeds rose just 2% over last year due to several large deals in 2013."
Tech issuance was up 22% year-over-year with 55 IPOs
"Proceeds of $85 billion, inflated by Alibaba’s $22 billion offering, were up 55% over 2013," Renaissance noted.
"While various global events, such as Russia’s incursion into the Ukraine and conflicts in the Middle East, caused nervousness in global markets, they largely failed to disrupt the US IPO applecart."
2014 is going down as the biggest year for IPOs since the dotcom bubble."
Source:  Business Insider, 18th December 2014

The fastest companies to reach a $1bn valuation

Fastest launch-to-$1B valuation YouTube $1.65B 20 months Groupon $1.35B 17 months Slack $1.12B 14 months http://t.co/vAB2xGtJhY
— Doug MacMillan (@dmac1) October 31, 2014

& also

@markstrefford Good call! Instagram $1B 18 months
— Doug MacMillan (@dmac1) October 31, 2014

Note - Doug MacMillan is a tech reporter for WSJ

9 of the world's top 20 internet companies are Asian

Source:  Data from WSJ, quoted by Christian Hernandez on Medium, 22nd September 2014
Note - Data compiled before the Alibaba IPO

Monocle is valued at appriximately $115m

"Tyler Brûlé, the FT columnist known for his luxurious lifestyle, has sold a minority stake in his global affairs magazine Monocle to Japanese newspaper publisher Nikkei Inc.
The deal values Monocle, which was launched in 2007, at about $115m. The size of Nikkei’s investment was not disclosed, but was below $10m.
“This says we’re in a very good place,” Mr Brûlé said. “We started with €10m-ish of capital in 2007.”
Partnering with Nikkei is intended to allow Monocle to develop its media franchise, while giving Nikkei an English-language platform to expand its presence in Asia.
[...]
Mr Brûlé said Monocle was profitable mainly thanks to its monthly magazine. The title’s print circulation rose 4 per cent year on year in the first half of 2014 to 77,030, mostly outside the UK – and now sells about half as many copies as Condé Nast’s GQ. The upcoming October edition has attracted more than $1m in print advertising, he said."

Source:  FT, 1st September 2014

The number of billion dollar companies founded in the US by year, 2013-2010

Source:  Techcrunch, 2nd November 2013
Note - Article has lots more info, and names all the companies
Also, 2010 wasn't necessarily a bad year - the companies may be worth a billion dollars - yet.

Pinterest is valued at $3.8 billion

"According to several sources, Pinterest has completed another enormous funding, this time nabbing $225 million with late-stage investor Fidelity Investments in the lead.
The new infusion of cash — which comes on the heels of a very recent and massive funding in February of $200 million that valued the social scrapbooking company at $2.5 billion — pegs the latest valuation of Pinterest at $3.8 billion."

Source:  AllThingsD, 23rd October 2013

Earlier - $2.5bn in February

Pinterest is valued at $2.5 billion

"Online scrapbook Pinterest has raised a new $200 million round of funding that gives it a valuation of $2.5 billion, the company said on Wednesday.
Pinterest, which allows users to create online bulletin boards based on various themes such as travel, decorating, or sports, said in a statement it would use the new capital to build new features, beef up its infrastructure, and make "strategic acquisitions of both talent and technology."
Long-short hedge fund Valiant led the investment round, joined by existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners and FirstMark Capital. Valiant has invested in several consumer-Internet companies in the past, including search engines Google and Baidu."

Source:  Reuters, 20th February 2013

Twitter is valued at approximately $11 billion

"A rough valuation for Twitter can be established through where its shares trade in online secondary markets, though a firm figure is difficult. “Using the secondary market for shares to mark enterprise value is a very difficult and opaque process. It is a rumor-rich and special-share-class soup,” says Greencrest’s Max Wolff. “That said, Twitter is up since the Facebook IPO and is now valued at northward of $11 billion. This makes sense as growth in users and new monetization efforts are both yielding fruit and pointing toward a good 2013 for Twitter.” A brief history of Twitter’s valuation: in July 2011, a funding round pegged it at $8 billion, up from a $3.7 billion figure that emerged seven months earlier. For perspective, Facebook currently has a market cap of $60.8 billion. Zynga ($1.9 billion) and Groupon ($3.4 billion) are much smaller."

Source:  Forbes, 3rd January 2013

Mobile payments company Square is valued at $3.25 billion

"Square, the mobile payments startup headed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, has closed a more than $200 million fundraising round that will value the company at $3.25 billion.
The company had previously raised $100 million in 2011 valuing it at more than $1 billion, and was first revealed to be seeking another round of funding in late July. According to Square’s press release announcing the news, the investors who participated in the latest funding round included Citi Ventures, Rizvi Traverse Management and Starbucks."

Source:  Mashable, 17th September 2012

Groupon's IPO values the company at $12.65bn

"Groupon raised $700m in its highly anticipated initial public offering on Thursday night, overcoming a host of investor concerns to break through in a difficult market for US IPOs.
The pricing at $20 a share valued the group at $12.65bn. The valuation was above its range of $10bn-$11bn, but below the valuation it had been seeking earlier this year of closer to $20bn."

Source:  Financial Times, 4th November 2011

Twitter is valued at $8bn

"Twitter, the microblogging website that lets users tweet messages of 140 characters or less, is now worth $8bn (£4.9bn). The firm's new price tag comes after a $400m investment in the loss-making venture from serial social media investor DST Global. Twitter is now nominally worth about the same as rating agency Moody's, which had revenues of $1.2bn in the first six months of 2011 and is nearly as valuable as Marks & Spencer.
The huge valuation reflects high expectations for the company. Confirming the investment, Twitter also announced that its users now send 200m tweets a day, up from 65m a year ago."

Source:  The Guardian, 2nd August 2011

Google's market capitalisation has risen by $16bn since the launch of Google+

"How much is social worth to Google? Investors added $20 billion to Google’s market cap the first week after the launch of Google+ on June 28. A Morgan Stanley downgrade on Friday, brought the total down to $15.8 billion because of doubts whether Google will indeed be able to capitalize on new products such as Google+. But somewhere in between there, give or take a few billion, is how much more the market thinks Google is worth than before the launch of Google+.
On June 27 (the day before the announcement), the stock closed at $482.80. It rose to a high of $546.60 on July 7, for a $20.6 billion gain to its market cap (with 322.25 million shares outstanding). Then the stock dropped to $532 at Friday’s close.
Of course there are other factors at play here (the health of Google’s core search business, the overall market, etc.). In the past week, however, the most important new event for Google was it’s latest foray into social. And even though Google+ is still in a limited beta, the market is already rewarding the serious focus on social that it represents."
Source:  Techcrunch, 10th July 2011