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Companies That May Be the Next $1B Startups
- imh 11y agoCan we please stop calling billion dollar companies startups?
- loceng 11y agoWe should just call them people's projects..
- jkestner 11y agoNot until their P/E first returns a positive number.
- imh 11y agoDoes that make twitter, amazon, and tesla still startups? I swear I'm not cherrypicking data. Those, plus google and facebook, are the first big companies I thought to look up P/E on. Public startup seems like a contradiction. http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/twtr/pe-ratio http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/twtr/pe-ratio http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/amzn/pe-ratio http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/amzn/pe-ratio http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/tsla/pe-ratio http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/tsla/pe-ratio I agree company size is a bad metric, but there's something weird about calling some of these huge companies with thousands of employees startups (the unicorns, I mean, not amazon and twitter).
- jkestner 11y agoWas tongue-in-cheek, but that's why I used the word "first". All three have turned a quarterly profit at some point (Twitter only if you discount losses from stock-based compensation). Twitter and Tesla have not yet turned on the money spigot, so you could argue they're still startups. Amazon is a grown-ass business that can turn the spigot on anytime it wants to impress investors.
- imh 11y agoAh, I couldn't tell how you meant it. Poe's law and all that.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- nickpsecurity 11y agoI'm with you. It's ridiculous. I call hitting a billion dollars a good finish unless I'm wanting to gamble. A start-up are people with a plan, some money, determination, and maybe some customers/users. They're just getting started with no clue if they're going to make it or they've existed a while with uncertain business model. The $10-100+ mil club are typically established companies still growing, still adapting, and with huge valuations.
- gjolund 11y agoI'm writing a filter for my hacker news plugin that removes all references to "unicorn" from my feed.
- byoung2 11y agoYou'd miss out on some good articles: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/11/141112-unicorn-deer-slovenia-antlers-science-animals/ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/11/141112-unico...
- gjolund 11y agodammit, that was a good one maybe I should just exclude financial news sites with non technical staff.
- dang 11y agoIndeed, it passed the annoying stage some time ago. Is it even a real usage? I've only seen it in press articles. We took "unicorn" out of this HN title and will probably just keep taking it out of all HN titles until it finally goes away. One could almost write code to replace it, but I think not quite.
- gjolund 11y agoKeep fighting the good fight.
- 11thEarlOfMar 11y agoYC Firms: AirWare CoinBase DoorDash Mixpanel Optimizely ZenPayroll
- DarthMader 11y agoThey're missing Flexport from this list
- mrdrozdov 11y agoBy Location: New York - 8 San Francisco - 16 Rest of CA - 12
- binxbolling 11y agoWhy are you only tallying NY and CA?
- joshu 11y agoI think I am an early investor in five of these. Not incredibly fond of the term "unicorn" though.
- gjolund 11y agoA lot of the tech community is "magic" to the uninformed and uneducated. I think the term "unicorn" is a play on this sentiment. There is nothing mythical about well funded startups having high valuations. You don't stumble into one while galavanting through an enchanted forest. You can't drink the blood of a successful SV CEO to prolong your life. If you say "unicorn" in reference to tech startups I immediately assume you are a trendy idiot who's vocabulary doesn't extend past memes and buzzwords. I've worked at several "unicorns", we all think you sound dumb. edit: "you" is directed at the financial news community.
- furyofantares 11y agoWell, you don't do any of those things with unicorns, either
- gjolund 11y agoapparently you've never watched / read harry potter
- getdavidhiggins 11y agoIt's a misnomer, but is someone's attempt to define any tech company which is so far apart from the rest of the pack in terms of business practices and reach that they don't warrant being called 'yet another tech company'. This usually involves under handedness, tax loopholes, and secret handshakes that 'normal' startups are too scared to execute on. 'Normal' startups have a market safety net to fall back on and can pivit anytime they want without much fanfare caused. Unicorns are not afforded this luxury because they are, well, unicorns.
- EGreg 11y agoOn average, how many years was it since the company opened when you invested?
- ams6110 11y agoTaboola is already in my /etc/hosts file.
- jodrellblank 11y agoReally? Aren't you missing out on how people are buying iPhones for $1? Taboola is a billion dollar business with MULTIPLE investment rounds over a hundred million dollars? I am angry about it.
- bbcbasic 11y agoYeah its the arms race of the commercial web vs. the viewer who wants high quality but free content and no ad disruptions.
- iribe 11y agoOut of all of these, only one stands out as a sure fire success: sonos.
- qCOVET 11y agoSo what would you call a Startup that would hit a trillion dollar valuation ? - May be we invent the name here on HN .
- gjolund 11y agoA multi-national corporation. or The Catholic Church. http://www.economist.com/node/21560536 http://www.economist.com/node/21560536
- bliti 11y agoA pin. As in the pin that burst the bubble.
- monochromatic 11y agoApple.
- Ankaios 11y agoA kilocorn? Sorry, everyone.
- thrill 11y agoAn asteroid miner.
- arthur_debert 11y agoIt's surprising how much of it relates to food delivery (the largest group, in fact). Wrote my take at how the it's distributed here https://medium.com/@arthurdebert/2abb1df33f6d https://medium.com/@arthurdebert/2abb1df33f6d
- simonebrunozzi 11y agoI believe that Betterment is already past the 1B dollar valuation. Am I wrong?
- ftrflyr 11y agoVertical farming is going to be huge.
- tsieling 11y ago50! If you're going to go listicle, go large.
- farnsworth 11y agoIt would be nice to see a list like this from 4 years ago.
- ChuckFrank 11y agoA unicorn? I don't see a single one. I'm currently consulting in the food delivery space, and I can tell you one thing -- don't believe it. It's certainly possible to create solid local businesses in the space, but not businesses at a scale that a billion dollar in valuation demands. And when you add in the lack of barriers to entry for many of those companies that are in existing sectors overrun with competitors, I think you can cull the list by 50% right off the bat. But I'm sure they are excited to see themselves on this list, as I would be, even if I knew our fundamentals that got us there were only based upon clearly unrealistic hopes and prayers for future users and revenue. And here I was honestly hoping for a real 'unicorn' list. I should have known better.
- salimmadjd 11y ago100% agree on the food delivery space. I've told a few investors not to touch it. Basically it will parallel the restaurant industry at best. Lots of players without much margins.
- fhe 11y agoI live in China, and I am a user of ele.me - the food delivery service, and have worked with 17zuoye. 17zuoye is a solid business. They have worked for years to penetrate the K-12 education market, which, being public funded move at a rather slow pace, but once you get your foot in the door, you have a natural barrier to fend off new entrants. Ele.me is a rather curious story. They get to where they are by heavily subsidizing restaurants and customers. For all I can tell, they lose money on every delivery they make. and the moment they cut back on subsidies, people stop using their service. As a customer I welcome the subsidies (it works like a wealth transfer program, where the VC's are footing lunch bills), but as a sustainable business I am not sure where it could be headed...
- prawn 11y agoWhat are the two biggest issues in food delivery? I imagine it's the production of food and delivery of it, right? (Funny written out, but I'm sure you get my point - labour costs.) Staff to load automated delivery vehicles and the patrons unloading at the other end will eventually solve one half. Half decent automated food production could solve the other. A lot of Indian or Chinese dishes (curries, stir-fries, etc) could surely be automated? Adding and stirring, portioning out into containers, etc? Could do many pasta dishes in the same way. With the right technology, and a limited selection of meals, could you realistically staff a restaurant delivering out to hundreds each night with 1-2 people? I could see unpack-and-go setups making this industry easy to scale. If delivered meals were decent and cheap, I'd get it a few times a week. At the moment the price puts me off - labour costs are high in Australia.
- somberi 11y agoThumbtack and Sonos?