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Highest funded US Startups from 2006 to 2008
- vaksel 18y agoOut of those 161, I've only heard of 32. Out of those 32, I only use 3 more than once
- Sam_Odio 18y agoYou'd be surprised. You probably use several of these startups without even realizing it. For example, CDNetworks is a large content delivery network. And if you've ever stumbled across those annoying parked domains you've probably availed yourself to OverSee's services.
- markessien 18y agoOn reading your comment, I'm sure the VCs of the none-32 are kicking themselves at making such bad investments.
- Eliezer 18y agoI bet that the companies on this list that actually make good-old-fashioned material things, like Nanosolar, pay off triple the average return of the Net startups.
- axod 18y agoI'm not sure solar has really taken off big time yet has it? Surely there is a massive investment into research+design before any return is seen?
- DaniFong 18y agoSolar is pretty much in the process of taking off. The world market grew by 62% year over year last year. http://www.solarbuzz.com/Marketbuzz2008-intro.htm http://www.solarbuzz.com/Marketbuzz2008-intro.htm
- nostrademons 18y agoI'm really tempted to take that bet... The virtue of web startups is that marginal costs are effectively zero. So once you've paid off your fixed costs (i.e. have basically any revenue model that actually works), you're profitable. If something like FaceBook, with $150M in revenues, is not profitable, it's usually because they're empire builders and hire many more people than they actually need to keep the site going. That's easily fixed by laying off people. Solar companies, in addition to having large R&D costs, also have large variable costs. And they're competing against fairly low-cost alternatives, like oil and natural gas. To be profitable, their variable costs need to undercut oil prices, and they need to have enough left over to pay for R&D, overhead, and cost of capital. "Make something people want" is only a golden rule of startup success in software. For everything else, it's "Make something people want, cheaply".
- potatolicious 18y agoWeb startups have costs that are far from zero - as your example mentions, Facebook is not profitable because they retain too many people - but it is precisely their large work force that maintains their competitive lead in the social networking sphere. If they pared down their headcount to merely "sustain the server farms and fix bugs" size the company would disappear very quickly, having been out-done by someone else. They're not empire building, they're doing what they need to survive. The lack of costs on the web is precisely why web startups have some of the highest costs of all. Hosting is cheap, bandwidth is almost free. The only way Facebook avoids being out-done by two college kids in a garage is because they have big money backing them, and are building out like mad. On the flip side, traditional startups sell something that is of intrinsic worth. Most web apps have very little intrinsic worth, and is easy substituted - they have no patent-protected edge over the competition, and the COST of cloning an innovative feature is FAR less than the cost to reverse-engineer an ingenious new solar panel.
- nostrademons 18y agoRight, but they have variable costs that are close to zero, i.e. the marginal cost of servicing one extra customer is zero. (In practice, it's a bit more than that - you're looking at fractions of a cent for bandwidth, servers, ops people to maintain those servers, etc.) I worked it out for my startup, based on previous websites that have gotten traffic, and it came to something like $1/month/200 registered users, or $0.05 CPM. Their fixed costs are high, but usually VCs invest to pay those fixed costs, after the startup has already started getting traction.
- hugh 18y agoA well-timed reminder of something that a lot of people here seem to forget: not all startups are frivolous webapps. Some of the interesting ones: Nanosolar: High-efficiency solar cells Gridpoint: Something to do with power grid management Plastic logic: Flexible displays eSolar: Solar thermal power HelioVolt: More solar cells! SulfurCell: More solar cells! GodTube: Christian Videos. Seriously, this one sounds like a joke, but it exists and somebody gave it $30 million. Fisker: Electric cars. Admittedly a rather high percentage are still web-based software of some kind. And an awfully large percentage of those remaining are related to energy. Another interesting (if worrying) trend: I couldn't find any biotech on the list at all (there might be a few, I didn't look at everything but I checked the names for bio-sounding things).
- vaksel 18y agogodtube is funny, its kinda like conservapedia. Its a good business decision for the guys who did it, because they cash in on rightwing ignorance, who think youtube/wiki produces all its content and spin it with liberal bias. Its the same people who think blogspot needs to be sued because someone made an offensive post on one of their accounts
- fallentimes 18y agoIf you ever want a laugh, read conservapedia's terms of use.
- Prrometheus 18y agoIf you believe that viewing certain things is wrong, then pre-filtered content is of value to you. Does Godtube particularly cater to "ignorance"? Now, Conservapedia is ridiculous, but the only people I've seen take it seriously are liberals in search of a caricature to attack.
- vaksel 18y agothe hannity/limbaugh crowd takes conservapedia VERY seriously
- teej 18y agoHow is Slide so low on the list? Their public $50M was a SECOND round of funding.
- dmix 18y agoI went through most of them and I found Plastic Logic the most interesting. They have a very thin "epaper" coming out next year that looks like it has potential to be a great disruptive product. CNN seems to like it too, http://www.plasticlogic.com/ http://www.plasticlogic.com/
- noor420 18y agoAlso interesting and related : a) Sony's "Flexible Full Color Paper Screen" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6bkmPjVF-k&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6bkmPjVF-k&feature=relat... b) Readius's "Polymervision 3GSM e-paper" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_m36Gr4jzM&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_m36Gr4jzM&feature=relat...
- dawie 18y agoI would like to see a list of the LOWEST funded US Startups from 2006 to 2008.
- cellis 18y agohttp://ycombinator.com/faq.html http://ycombinator.com/faq.html
- nostrademons 18y agoI'm guessing there are lots more self-funded startups that are started for effectively nothing.
- dmix 18y agoThe average initial startup investment in every industry is $25,000. Usually using the founders savings.
- nostrademons 18y agoRight, but the question posed above was "I'd like to see the lowest funded startups". I'm sure there are some folks living in dorms or with the parents and using university computers for their servers. Starting up is essentially "free" in that case, modulo time. Come to think of it, doesn't this describe Google for the first 2 years of its existence?
- fallentimes 18y agoHi!
- martythemaniak 18y agoOANDA is American? I could have sworn my office is downtown Toronto ;)
- fallentimes 18y agoSeatwave - 33 MM. Really? I love Yodlee, but 35 MM seems slightly ridiculous.
- brandnewlow 18y agoSo this guy just stole a list that Techcrunch republished? Why are we linking to him and not the original?