10 ms·

Three biggest Internet companies in each country

109 points by maris 12y ago

iag 12y ago
I am glad The Economist did the datab visualization in log scale. Otherwise, US and China would be so dominant rest of the countries would be impossible to see. Very cool data indeed.
onion2k 12y ago
Britain's biggest three are ASOS (online clothing retailer), JustEat (online takeaway ordering) and Wonga (online short term loans at ludicrous interest rates). A sad state of affairs for a technologically advanced country. Finland's top three are all Free To Play gaming companies. That's interesting. Is there some sort of tax incentive for gaming companies there?
- skrebbel 12y ago
  > Is there some sort of tax incentive for gaming companies there? Afaik, just a community effect.
- adamt 12y ago
  The British list would appear to have some omissions. E.g. online real-estate site Rightmove (LON:RMV - has market cap $3.76Bn) is bigger than JustEat and Wonga.
  - AndriusWSR 12y ago
    Adam, thanks so much for the information. Indeed, our World Startup Report was not aware of this company. We will update our data (can't promise that the Economist will change their infographic though). Thanks again!
    - PaulRobinson 12y ago
      How can you allow your data to be cited when you have so little clue about the markets you're talking about?
  - jackgavigan 12y ago
    Also, where's the Wonga valuation of $2.5bn sourced from?
- smickie 12y ago
  I wouldn't say it's a sad state of affairs. - ASOS is the Amazon of clothing, shipping internationally. I think it's the number on online clothing retailer in Australia. - As much as we all hate Wonga, in terms of technology they we're the first fully automated loans company. - Just Eat (exactly the same as Seemless for the UK) is also an amazing accomplishment for a company/website, uniting thousands of takeaways. (That's what we can to-go restaurants in the UK). I'm fairly proud we have some huge ($15 billion dollar) home-grown companies in these areas (even if Wonga is evil).
Len0 12y ago
Wow, there is entry for Kosovo but not for Bosnia, Croatia or Serbia. They could've summed this whole region under Balkans.
- AndriusWSR 12y ago
  Initially, we were aiming at covering 100 countries. However, due to lack of data from some countries we cut it down to 50. We are working with our global community of contributors and we are looking for people who are willing to help us. If interested, just send us an email: hello@worldstartupreport.com
- dchest 12y ago
  And no Montenegro, which has what I think a pretty big dotME registry operator.
coolandsmartrr 12y ago
Seems like registration is required. Anyone have a registration-free method for viewing?
- taejo 12y ago
  Incognito mode
davedx 12y ago
Shapeways is 2nd in the Netherlands, ahead of Booking.com. I have to say I'm quite surprised; I knew 3D printing was taking off but I didn't know it was that popular.
gambiting 12y ago
There are only 2 companies for a few countries, so that's not "three biggest".
- tormeh 12y ago
  Nope, it's just that for the US, for example, Amazon and Facebook have almost identical valuations so they're on top of each other.
- alandarev 12y ago
  Looks like there are only two internet companies in USA
  - xelfer 12y ago
    There's like half a pixel you can hover over to the left of Amazon which shows Facebook.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - wallzz 12y ago
      works only if he have a retina display!
- hackplus 12y ago
  "Roll over the interactive chart above to see the company and value. If all three datapoints are not visible, it is because one is shrouded by another (ie, America's Amazon obscures Facebook, since both are worth around $185 billion); clicking on the key at the top will remove datapoints."
pdknsk 12y ago
The source is here, with the raw data linked at the bottom of the page. http://www.worldstartupwiki.org/page/Internet_Hall_Of_Fame http://www.worldstartupwiki.org/page/Internet_Hall_Of_Fame Also answers the question I had about how they figured out the valuation of non-public companies. > Valuation data comes from: stock market data (highest point in the history of the company was selected), acquisition value, valuation at the latest round of investment, or, as a last resort, a guesstimate based on revenues and industry.
wsr 12y ago
World Startup Report team here. It's awesome to see our data on HN! One interesting point to note is that out of the top 7 countries, none of them are from Europe. To put into context, the biggest internet company in Europe is merely 1/40th of the size of Google. HOWEVER, Europe dominates the unicorn club (companies over $1b in valuation). Nearly half of 30 countries on the unicorn club list are European. This prompts the question, is European market big enough but fragmented in such way that you can easily build mini-billion dollar companies, but never anything truly massive? We'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on this. Also, AndriusWSR (lead researcher behind this research) will be joining us shortly to answer a few questions. Please feel free to ask away.
- yxhuvud 12y ago
  What do you mean by unicorn club?
  - wsr 12y ago
    unicorn club = companies over $1b in valuation.
  - wozniacki 12y ago
    Could be this? 1) We found 39 companies belong to what we call the “Unicorn Club” (by our definition, U.S.-based software companies started since 2003 and valued at over $1 billion by public or private market investors). That’s about .07 percent of venture-backed consumer and enterprise software startups. 2) On average, four unicorns were born per year in the past decade, with Facebook being the breakout “super-unicorn” (worth >$100 billion). In each recent decade, 1-3 super unicorns have been born. http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/unicorn-graph1c.png http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/unicorn-... http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/02/welcome-to-the-unicorn-club/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/02/welcome-to-the-unicorn-club...
- tormeh 12y ago
  -The whole common internal market thing is taking it's time. -While it's much easier than elsewhere to live and work in another country it's still a hassle and there's lingual and cultural issues in the way as well. -Crucially, the jungle telegraph usually ends at borders. News of great startups or whatever don't really spread well because of language issues and the fact that people tend not to have cross-border social relationships. There are programs like Erasmus that try to alleviate the issue, but not everyone goes on exchange, especially asocial types and the Brits.
LeonM 12y ago
I am Dutch, so naturally I checked the top 3 for the Netherlands. Number 3 (Booking.com) and number 1 (Marktplaats.nl, the dutch craigslist), I can understand because they are indeed big and well-known sites. However, the number 2, apparently, is a website called "Shapeways", which is supposedly worth $175M. I have never heard of it and I asked some of my colleagues and they never heard of it either. After visiting shapeways I found that it is a 3D printing community site. After some research I found that it is actually founded in the USA, and just happens to have an office in the Netherlands.
- AndriusWSR 12y ago
  Hi, WSR team here. Great comment! The Netherlands have an interesting situation. Even though everyone would say the startup ecosystem is booming, the country has not managed to produce BIG success stories. We selected Shapeways as one of the top 3 companies there. They've raised almost $50M to date (http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/shapeways http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/shapeways) and we put our guesstimate in a range of $150M - $200M. The company is actually founded by Dutch founders and they do have quite a big number of their employees in the Netherlands (close to 50 but should double-check on this one). With that in mind, it'd be interesting to hear what would you put as the 2nd (or 3rd) most valuable Dutch internet company? Thanks!
  - diminish 12y ago
    Similarly for Israel, would CheckPoint really count as an Internet company in the sense you use here considering their product revenue breakdown? If so in USA, you may as well consider many network infrastructure companies there, Or some cellular data companies may be considered within this list.
  - jibbirish 12y ago
    I would say thuisbezorgd.nl / takeaway.com is a good competitor? They just raised 74 mil. http://startupjuncture.com/2014/04/10/contender-for-food-delivery-crown-takeaway-com-raises-further-eur74m/ http://startupjuncture.com/2014/04/10/contender-for-food-del...
  - 12y ago
msh 12y ago
what the hell is a internet company, I could not find a explanation? For example, in denmark the largest company in their chart is unity. Thats a gaming framework company, not really a internet company.
tormeh 12y ago
What factors are needed for a country to have start-up success. We know SV comes from defence money, but setting that outlier aside, what's the winning formula? China's success would suggest that a huge talent pool and protectionism towards the big US internet companies is a winning move. Anything else?
wtracy 12y ago
I was surprised to see Chile and Peru so far below Argentina. All the news pieces that I see make Argentina sound like a communist dystopia. Anyone know whether the Startup Chile program (where foreign startups basically get a cash handout to physically relocate to Chile) is likely to have an impact on this chart?
- GFischer 12y ago
  Argentina is indeed a strange case, a capitalist society coexisting with a socialist trending communist government. In practice, most companies manage to navigate ("hack" :) ) the increasingly ludicrous government impositions, and most know (or hope) many will be lifted once the government changes hand (or another crisis explodes, which doesn't seem far off). Some do quit, it was interesting to read about the entrepreneurs behind Wash.io having started a company in Argentina before, and quitting because it was so much work for so little benefit: http://nymag.com/news/features/laundry-apps-2014-5/ http://nymag.com/news/features/laundry-apps-2014-5/
drpgq 12y ago
I don't know whether to depressed for Canada or not given some of the other countries relative performance. I didn't expect Argentina to be so close though.
ValentineC 12y ago
I am shocked that The Economist, a publication I respected in the past, would use a single source without performing further fact-checking. For example, migme is headquartered in Singapore (and listed on the Australian stock exchange), so it's surprising that they're featured under Indonesia. There are probably more discrepancies to this chart that should be corrected.
msravi 12y ago
Surprised that Facebook doesn't make it to the top-3 in the US
- msravi 12y ago
  My bad... it actually comes in at #3 and is hidden under amazon. You can filter using the legend to see it.
- hackplus 12y ago
  Isn't FB actually 3rd at $183bn?
keerthiko 12y ago
For the people missing one or two of the top three for each country, they are underneath one of the others because their data points very close with similar valuations (Facebook and Amazon in US). Use the nifty filter buttons at the top of the graph to see first, second and third companies separately.
lukasm 12y ago
The graph is misleading. South Africa Naspers owns Allegro (1st Poland). Secondly, Allegro, which is polish Ebay, has almost whole market share in Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus etc. and possibly that contributes to Naspers value. There is no nk.pl (polish facebook, 50% market share). It was sold for 200m a few years ago. Hard to compare valuation of private and public companies, especially in different places. Better graph would with revenue, profit, growth.
- AndriusWSR 12y ago
  Lukas, World Startup Report team here. We worked together with the Economist putting this together. We did look at private/public AND also acquired companies (in case of Allegro). Would you have a source for the acquisition information? Keep in mind that we looked at 3 companies per country in which case it could have only been coincidence. Our goal was to show the relative extent of what is possible in different countries rather than to provide an exact estimate of each company.
  - fsniper 12y ago
    Hey Markafoni employee here. Also Markafoni is 99% (maybe 100% not sure of the latest vent out situations) Naspers'.
  - lukasm 12y ago
    first google hits http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/27/poalnds-facebook-nasza-klasa-rumoured-to-be-for-sale-for-e130m/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/27/poalnds-facebook-nasza-klas... Also onet.pl PLN 1.4 billion (€335 million). http://www.digitaltveurope.net/23115/tvn-in-move-to-sell-onet-pl-to-ringier-axel-springer/ http://www.digitaltveurope.net/23115/tvn-in-move-to-sell-one...
VMG 12y ago
General observation: Log scale! Observations regarding Germany: Rocket Internet (#1) specializes in copying foreign companies, like creating the "Zappos" clone "Zalando", which is #2.
- AndriusWSR 12y ago
  Great point. We had our concerns about Rocket as well. In the end, we've put them as #1, with Zalando on the list as well. It seems that Rocket does not hold a stake in Zalando anymore (http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/24/rocketinternet-shareholders-idUSL6N0P523X20140624 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/24/rocketinternet-sha...)
sriku 12y ago
Side note - I was surprised by the number of trackers that ghostery showed on the economist's site! http://imgur.com/LftipWr http://imgur.com/LftipWr
grexi 12y ago
Where is Austria?
- wsr 12y ago
  Grexi - As mentioned in another thread, The World Startup Report team aimed for 100 countries for this research, but realistically we were able to only get good data for 50 countries for this research. If your country is not on the list, and you would like to join us for the next World Startup Report research as a representative for your country, please email us: hello@worldstartupreport.com We'd love for your help to participate in this community research!
jpswade 12y ago
"United Kingdom" seems to be listed as "Britain".
PaulRobinson 12y ago
Hilariously inaccurate because of the focus on "Internet companies", a vague term at best. Apple is missing at a market cap today of $578 billion, and whilst a lot of that is down to hardware, they have an internet office suite, the largest number of online registered users with credit cards on their DB in the World and probably shift more data than Facebook just in app downloads. BT Group is missing from the UK despite a market cap of £30 billion. Without them, there is no UK Internet. They were developing hypertext systems in the 1980s. Others have pointed out mistakes elsewhere in the data for other countries - I sense that without context, this data is mostly useless and uncitable.
- tallanvor 12y ago
  Not to mention that Microsoft is very much centered around the internet these days!
- frogpelt 12y ago
  They probably tried to focus on companies that began as internet companies. Microsoft and Apple most certainly did not. Google, Facebook, and Amazon most certainly did.
  - adventured 12y ago
    Naspers is not an Internet company, and didn't start as one. Listing Naspers is equivalent to listing Time Warner, Disney, Reuters, or Bloomberg. It's silly at best. I'd say they filled in weak data points when it was convenient.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
instakill 12y ago
Not exactly each country. Mine wasn't there.
ig1 12y ago
The data seems pretty inconsistent, for example Skype is included but Supercell isn't (both acquired). Also attribution to country isn't consistent. Sometimes the founding country is used and sometimes the current HQ location is used.
viblo 12y ago
For sweden I wonder why not Betsson is included? Its market cap is almost double that of Klarna, the current 3rd company? PaddyPower (another online betting company) is included for Ireland. It might be more missing, but this was easy to spot since Im both swedish and very familiar with Betsson.
wsr 12y ago
Dear All - World Startup Report team here. There have been many repeated questions in this thread, so we compiled all them into a single long answer for everyone. At World Startup Report, our goal was to show the world how big of an internet company you can build in each country. We have partnered with Startup Genome, as well as worked closely with Startup Digest and Hackers/Founders network to collect all this data. As we proceeded, we lowered our goal of covering 100 countries to covering 50 since we aimed to find the most reliable (as well as interesting) data. Our methodology included looking at publicly available data (stock market), online publications from sources like Financial Times, TechCrunch, The Next Web, etc. or sometimes even personal conversations with those companies. The definition of internet companies was: no ISPs, no software development houses (unless they have online products they are selling), no hardware companies. If a company is diversified (as was usually the case) we looked at the revenue breakdown and searched for the highest internet-related revenue streams. However, we do accept the fact that this information is constantly changing (we had to replace a few companies due to various reasons (even bankruptcy) over the course of our month-long research). At the same time, we are aware that there could have been a few omissions and this is the price we are willing to pay to show the public the best available data there is on the web right now. One last thing, we've put up our raw data on Silk, so you could play around with it as it is easier to visualize it. http://internet-hall-of-fame.silk.co/explore/table/collection/companies/column/country/column/industry/column/value/order/asc/country http://internet-hall-of-fame.silk.co/explore/table/collectio... If you'd like to help us make it better, or contribute with information about your country, please contact us at hello@worldstartupreport.com -- The World Startup Report Team
guiomie 12y ago
Living in Ottawa (Canada), I was surprised to see Shopify at no.3 with a 1 billion dollar valuation.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
wallzz 12y ago
Only 4 countries from Africa are listed , South Africa , Kenya , Algeria and Ethiopia , I don't know how they acquired such data , but I can assume the data is not accurate about the companies listed from Algeria (companies I know). Also some big African market are not listed : Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria. Or is it that the internet companies of these countries are many small companies that compete and do not monopolizing the market?
mode80 12y ago
Log scale seems a bad choice. (Did you gather that US companies exceed the value of all others combined?)
dhruvbird 12y ago
Google cache link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3TBNlgPN0XMJ:www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/07/daily-chart-6+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3TBNlgP...
frogpelt 12y ago
Somehow, Nigeria didn't make the list. http://arstechnica.com/security/2010/01/victims-lost-93-billion-to-419-scammers-in-2009/ http://arstechnica.com/security/2010/01/victims-lost-93-bill...
NicoJuicy 12y ago
To bad most Belgian companies move immediatly because of The high taxes. EG. Drupal moved.. That would probably a top 3 company :-)
utkarsh42 12y ago
Cool India at #3 with Flipkart. Quite a long way away from US n all though...

109 points by maris 12y ago

iag 12y ago

I am glad The Economist did the datab visualization in log scale. Otherwise, US and China would be so dominant rest of the countries would be impossible to see. Very cool data indeed.

onion2k 12y ago

Britain's biggest three are ASOS (online clothing retailer), JustEat (online takeaway ordering) and Wonga (online short term loans at ludicrous interest rates). A sad state of affairs for a technologically advanced country. Finland's top three are all Free To Play gaming companies. That's interesting. Is there some sort of tax incentive for gaming companies there?

skrebbel 12y ago
> Is there some sort of tax incentive for gaming companies there? Afaik, just a community effect.
adamt 12y ago
The British list would appear to have some omissions. E.g. online real-estate site Rightmove (LON:RMV - has market cap $3.76Bn) is bigger than JustEat and Wonga.
- AndriusWSR 12y ago
  Adam, thanks so much for the information. Indeed, our World Startup Report was not aware of this company. We will update our data (can't promise that the Economist will change their infographic though). Thanks again!
  - PaulRobinson 12y ago
    How can you allow your data to be cited when you have so little clue about the markets you're talking about?
- jackgavigan 12y ago
  Also, where's the Wonga valuation of $2.5bn sourced from?
smickie 12y ago
I wouldn't say it's a sad state of affairs. - ASOS is the Amazon of clothing, shipping internationally. I think it's the number on online clothing retailer in Australia. - As much as we all hate Wonga, in terms of technology they we're the first fully automated loans company. - Just Eat (exactly the same as Seemless for the UK) is also an amazing accomplishment for a company/website, uniting thousands of takeaways. (That's what we can to-go restaurants in the UK). I'm fairly proud we have some huge ($15 billion dollar) home-grown companies in these areas (even if Wonga is evil).

Len0 12y ago

Wow, there is entry for Kosovo but not for Bosnia, Croatia or Serbia. They could've summed this whole region under Balkans.

AndriusWSR 12y ago
Initially, we were aiming at covering 100 countries. However, due to lack of data from some countries we cut it down to 50. We are working with our global community of contributors and we are looking for people who are willing to help us. If interested, just send us an email: hello@worldstartupreport.com
dchest 12y ago
And no Montenegro, which has what I think a pretty big dotME registry operator.

coolandsmartrr 12y ago

Seems like registration is required. Anyone have a registration-free method for viewing?

taejo 12y ago
Incognito mode

davedx 12y ago

Shapeways is 2nd in the Netherlands, ahead of Booking.com. I have to say I'm quite surprised; I knew 3D printing was taking off but I didn't know it was that popular.

gambiting 12y ago

There are only 2 companies for a few countries, so that's not "three biggest".

tormeh 12y ago
Nope, it's just that for the US, for example, Amazon and Facebook have almost identical valuations so they're on top of each other.
alandarev 12y ago
Looks like there are only two internet companies in USA
- xelfer 12y ago
  There's like half a pixel you can hover over to the left of Amazon which shows Facebook.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - wallzz 12y ago
    works only if he have a retina display!
hackplus 12y ago
"Roll over the interactive chart above to see the company and value. If all three datapoints are not visible, it is because one is shrouded by another (ie, America's Amazon obscures Facebook, since both are worth around $185 billion); clicking on the key at the top will remove datapoints."

pdknsk 12y ago

The source is here, with the raw data linked at the bottom of the page. http://www.worldstartupwiki.org/page/Internet_Hall_Of_Fame http://www.worldstartupwiki.org/page/Internet_Hall_Of_Fame Also answers the question I had about how they figured out the valuation of non-public companies. > Valuation data comes from: stock market data (highest point in the history of the company was selected), acquisition value, valuation at the latest round of investment, or, as a last resort, a guesstimate based on revenues and industry.

wsr 12y ago

World Startup Report team here. It's awesome to see our data on HN! One interesting point to note is that out of the top 7 countries, none of them are from Europe. To put into context, the biggest internet company in Europe is merely 1/40th of the size of Google. HOWEVER, Europe dominates the unicorn club (companies over $1b in valuation). Nearly half of 30 countries on the unicorn club list are European. This prompts the question, is European market big enough but fragmented in such way that you can easily build mini-billion dollar companies, but never anything truly massive? We'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on this. Also, AndriusWSR (lead researcher behind this research) will be joining us shortly to answer a few questions. Please feel free to ask away.

yxhuvud 12y ago
What do you mean by unicorn club?
- wsr 12y ago
  unicorn club = companies over $1b in valuation.
- wozniacki 12y ago
  Could be this? 1) We found 39 companies belong to what we call the “Unicorn Club” (by our definition, U.S.-based software companies started since 2003 and valued at over $1 billion by public or private market investors). That’s about .07 percent of venture-backed consumer and enterprise software startups. 2) On average, four unicorns were born per year in the past decade, with Facebook being the breakout “super-unicorn” (worth >$100 billion). In each recent decade, 1-3 super unicorns have been born. http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/unicorn-graph1c.png http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/unicorn-... http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/02/welcome-to-the-unicorn-club/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/02/welcome-to-the-unicorn-club...
tormeh 12y ago
-The whole common internal market thing is taking it's time. -While it's much easier than elsewhere to live and work in another country it's still a hassle and there's lingual and cultural issues in the way as well. -Crucially, the jungle telegraph usually ends at borders. News of great startups or whatever don't really spread well because of language issues and the fact that people tend not to have cross-border social relationships. There are programs like Erasmus that try to alleviate the issue, but not everyone goes on exchange, especially asocial types and the Brits.

LeonM 12y ago

I am Dutch, so naturally I checked the top 3 for the Netherlands. Number 3 (Booking.com) and number 1 (Marktplaats.nl, the dutch craigslist), I can understand because they are indeed big and well-known sites. However, the number 2, apparently, is a website called "Shapeways", which is supposedly worth $175M. I have never heard of it and I asked some of my colleagues and they never heard of it either. After visiting shapeways I found that it is a 3D printing community site. After some research I found that it is actually founded in the USA, and just happens to have an office in the Netherlands.

AndriusWSR 12y ago
Hi, WSR team here. Great comment! The Netherlands have an interesting situation. Even though everyone would say the startup ecosystem is booming, the country has not managed to produce BIG success stories. We selected Shapeways as one of the top 3 companies there. They've raised almost $50M to date (http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/shapeways http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/shapeways) and we put our guesstimate in a range of $150M - $200M. The company is actually founded by Dutch founders and they do have quite a big number of their employees in the Netherlands (close to 50 but should double-check on this one). With that in mind, it'd be interesting to hear what would you put as the 2nd (or 3rd) most valuable Dutch internet company? Thanks!
- diminish 12y ago
  Similarly for Israel, would CheckPoint really count as an Internet company in the sense you use here considering their product revenue breakdown? If so in USA, you may as well consider many network infrastructure companies there, Or some cellular data companies may be considered within this list.
- jibbirish 12y ago
  I would say thuisbezorgd.nl / takeaway.com is a good competitor? They just raised 74 mil. http://startupjuncture.com/2014/04/10/contender-for-food-delivery-crown-takeaway-com-raises-further-eur74m/ http://startupjuncture.com/2014/04/10/contender-for-food-del...
- 12y ago

msh 12y ago

what the hell is a internet company, I could not find a explanation? For example, in denmark the largest company in their chart is unity. Thats a gaming framework company, not really a internet company.

tormeh 12y ago

What factors are needed for a country to have start-up success. We know SV comes from defence money, but setting that outlier aside, what's the winning formula? China's success would suggest that a huge talent pool and protectionism towards the big US internet companies is a winning move. Anything else?

wtracy 12y ago

I was surprised to see Chile and Peru so far below Argentina. All the news pieces that I see make Argentina sound like a communist dystopia. Anyone know whether the Startup Chile program (where foreign startups basically get a cash handout to physically relocate to Chile) is likely to have an impact on this chart?

GFischer 12y ago
Argentina is indeed a strange case, a capitalist society coexisting with a socialist trending communist government. In practice, most companies manage to navigate ("hack" :) ) the increasingly ludicrous government impositions, and most know (or hope) many will be lifted once the government changes hand (or another crisis explodes, which doesn't seem far off). Some do quit, it was interesting to read about the entrepreneurs behind Wash.io having started a company in Argentina before, and quitting because it was so much work for so little benefit: http://nymag.com/news/features/laundry-apps-2014-5/ http://nymag.com/news/features/laundry-apps-2014-5/

drpgq 12y ago

I don't know whether to depressed for Canada or not given some of the other countries relative performance. I didn't expect Argentina to be so close though.

ValentineC 12y ago

I am shocked that The Economist, a publication I respected in the past, would use a single source without performing further fact-checking. For example, migme is headquartered in Singapore (and listed on the Australian stock exchange), so it's surprising that they're featured under Indonesia. There are probably more discrepancies to this chart that should be corrected.

msravi 12y ago

Surprised that Facebook doesn't make it to the top-3 in the US

msravi 12y ago
My bad... it actually comes in at #3 and is hidden under amazon. You can filter using the legend to see it.
hackplus 12y ago
Isn't FB actually 3rd at $183bn?

keerthiko 12y ago

For the people missing one or two of the top three for each country, they are underneath one of the others because their data points very close with similar valuations (Facebook and Amazon in US). Use the nifty filter buttons at the top of the graph to see first, second and third companies separately.

lukasm 12y ago

The graph is misleading. South Africa Naspers owns Allegro (1st Poland). Secondly, Allegro, which is polish Ebay, has almost whole market share in Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus etc. and possibly that contributes to Naspers value. There is no nk.pl (polish facebook, 50% market share). It was sold for 200m a few years ago. Hard to compare valuation of private and public companies, especially in different places. Better graph would with revenue, profit, growth.

AndriusWSR 12y ago
Lukas, World Startup Report team here. We worked together with the Economist putting this together. We did look at private/public AND also acquired companies (in case of Allegro). Would you have a source for the acquisition information? Keep in mind that we looked at 3 companies per country in which case it could have only been coincidence. Our goal was to show the relative extent of what is possible in different countries rather than to provide an exact estimate of each company.
- fsniper 12y ago
  Hey Markafoni employee here. Also Markafoni is 99% (maybe 100% not sure of the latest vent out situations) Naspers'.
- lukasm 12y ago
  first google hits http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/27/poalnds-facebook-nasza-klasa-rumoured-to-be-for-sale-for-e130m/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/27/poalnds-facebook-nasza-klas... Also onet.pl PLN 1.4 billion (€335 million). http://www.digitaltveurope.net/23115/tvn-in-move-to-sell-onet-pl-to-ringier-axel-springer/ http://www.digitaltveurope.net/23115/tvn-in-move-to-sell-one...

VMG 12y ago

General observation: Log scale! Observations regarding Germany: Rocket Internet (#1) specializes in copying foreign companies, like creating the "Zappos" clone "Zalando", which is #2.

AndriusWSR 12y ago
Great point. We had our concerns about Rocket as well. In the end, we've put them as #1, with Zalando on the list as well. It seems that Rocket does not hold a stake in Zalando anymore (http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/24/rocketinternet-shareholders-idUSL6N0P523X20140624 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/24/rocketinternet-sha...)

sriku 12y ago

Side note - I was surprised by the number of trackers that ghostery showed on the economist's site! http://imgur.com/LftipWr http://imgur.com/LftipWr

grexi 12y ago

Where is Austria?

wsr 12y ago
Grexi - As mentioned in another thread, The World Startup Report team aimed for 100 countries for this research, but realistically we were able to only get good data for 50 countries for this research. If your country is not on the list, and you would like to join us for the next World Startup Report research as a representative for your country, please email us: hello@worldstartupreport.com We'd love for your help to participate in this community research!

jpswade 12y ago

"United Kingdom" seems to be listed as "Britain".

PaulRobinson 12y ago

Hilariously inaccurate because of the focus on "Internet companies", a vague term at best. Apple is missing at a market cap today of $578 billion, and whilst a lot of that is down to hardware, they have an internet office suite, the largest number of online registered users with credit cards on their DB in the World and probably shift more data than Facebook just in app downloads. BT Group is missing from the UK despite a market cap of £30 billion. Without them, there is no UK Internet. They were developing hypertext systems in the 1980s. Others have pointed out mistakes elsewhere in the data for other countries - I sense that without context, this data is mostly useless and uncitable.

tallanvor 12y ago
Not to mention that Microsoft is very much centered around the internet these days!
frogpelt 12y ago
They probably tried to focus on companies that began as internet companies. Microsoft and Apple most certainly did not. Google, Facebook, and Amazon most certainly did.
- adventured 12y ago
  Naspers is not an Internet company, and didn't start as one. Listing Naspers is equivalent to listing Time Warner, Disney, Reuters, or Bloomberg. It's silly at best. I'd say they filled in weak data points when it was convenient.
- deleted 12y ago
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instakill 12y ago

Not exactly each country. Mine wasn't there.

ig1 12y ago

The data seems pretty inconsistent, for example Skype is included but Supercell isn't (both acquired). Also attribution to country isn't consistent. Sometimes the founding country is used and sometimes the current HQ location is used.

viblo 12y ago

For sweden I wonder why not Betsson is included? Its market cap is almost double that of Klarna, the current 3rd company? PaddyPower (another online betting company) is included for Ireland. It might be more missing, but this was easy to spot since Im both swedish and very familiar with Betsson.

wsr 12y ago

Dear All - World Startup Report team here. There have been many repeated questions in this thread, so we compiled all them into a single long answer for everyone. At World Startup Report, our goal was to show the world how big of an internet company you can build in each country. We have partnered with Startup Genome, as well as worked closely with Startup Digest and Hackers/Founders network to collect all this data. As we proceeded, we lowered our goal of covering 100 countries to covering 50 since we aimed to find the most reliable (as well as interesting) data. Our methodology included looking at publicly available data (stock market), online publications from sources like Financial Times, TechCrunch, The Next Web, etc. or sometimes even personal conversations with those companies. The definition of internet companies was: no ISPs, no software development houses (unless they have online products they are selling), no hardware companies. If a company is diversified (as was usually the case) we looked at the revenue breakdown and searched for the highest internet-related revenue streams. However, we do accept the fact that this information is constantly changing (we had to replace a few companies due to various reasons (even bankruptcy) over the course of our month-long research). At the same time, we are aware that there could have been a few omissions and this is the price we are willing to pay to show the public the best available data there is on the web right now. One last thing, we've put up our raw data on Silk, so you could play around with it as it is easier to visualize it. http://internet-hall-of-fame.silk.co/explore/table/collection/companies/column/country/column/industry/column/value/order/asc/country http://internet-hall-of-fame.silk.co/explore/table/collectio... If you'd like to help us make it better, or contribute with information about your country, please contact us at hello@worldstartupreport.com -- The World Startup Report Team

guiomie 12y ago

Living in Ottawa (Canada), I was surprised to see Shopify at no.3 with a 1 billion dollar valuation.

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wallzz 12y ago

Only 4 countries from Africa are listed , South Africa , Kenya , Algeria and Ethiopia , I don't know how they acquired such data , but I can assume the data is not accurate about the companies listed from Algeria (companies I know). Also some big African market are not listed : Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria. Or is it that the internet companies of these countries are many small companies that compete and do not monopolizing the market?

mode80 12y ago

Log scale seems a bad choice. (Did you gather that US companies exceed the value of all others combined?)

dhruvbird 12y ago

Google cache link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3TBNlgPN0XMJ:www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/07/daily-chart-6+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3TBNlgP...

frogpelt 12y ago

Somehow, Nigeria didn't make the list. http://arstechnica.com/security/2010/01/victims-lost-93-billion-to-419-scammers-in-2009/ http://arstechnica.com/security/2010/01/victims-lost-93-bill...

NicoJuicy 12y ago

To bad most Belgian companies move immediatly because of The high taxes. EG. Drupal moved.. That would probably a top 3 company :-)

utkarsh42 12y ago

Cool India at #3 with Flipkart. Quite a long way away from US n all though...