Companies That May Be the Next $1B Startups

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/here-are-the-companies-that-may-be-the-next-50-start-up-unicorns/

by dankohn1 • 11 years ago

50 53 11 years ago

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

gjolund6• 11 years ago

I'm writing a filter for my hacker news plugin that removes all references to "unicorn" from my feed.

byoung2• 11 years ago

You'd miss out on some good articles: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/11/141112-unico...

gjolund6• 11 years ago

dammit, that was a good one

maybe I should just exclude financial news sites with non technical staff.

dang• 11 years ago

Indeed, 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.

gjolund6• 11 years ago

Keep fighting the good fight.

11thEarlOfMar• 11 years ago

YC Firms:

AirWare

CoinBase

DoorDash

Mixpanel

Optimizely

ZenPayroll

DarthMader• 11 years ago

They're missing Flexport from this list

mrdrozdov2• 11 years ago

By Location:

  New York      - 8
  San Francisco - 16
  Rest of CA    - 12

binxbolling• 11 years ago

Why are you only tallying NY and CA?

jkestner3• 11 years ago

  4 - China
  2 - Boston
  2 - Chicago
  2 - India
  1 - Berlin
  1 - London
  1 - South Africa
  1 - Virginia

mrdrozdov2• 11 years ago

Because the 80/20 rule.

bbcbasic2• 11 years ago

Because... Ewe Ess Ayy! Ewe Ess Ayy!

joshu3• 11 years ago

I think I am an early investor in five of these. Not incredibly fond of the term "unicorn" though.

gjolund6• 11 years ago

A 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• 11 years ago

Well, you don't do any of those things with unicorns, either

getdavidhiggins• 11 years ago

It'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.

EGreg2• 11 years ago

On average, how many years was it since the company opened when you invested?

joshu3• 11 years ago

The youngest on the list is four years, now.

ams6110• 11 years ago

Taboola is already in my /etc/hosts file.

jodrellblank• 11 years ago

Really? 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.

bbcbasic2• 11 years ago

Yeah its the arms race of the commercial web vs. the viewer who wants high quality but free content and no ad disruptions.

iribe• 11 years ago

Out of all of these, only one stands out as a sure fire success: sonos.

qCOVET• 11 years ago

So what would you call a Startup that would hit a trillion dollar valuation ? - May be we invent the name here on HN .

gjolund6• 11 years ago

A multi-national corporation.

The Catholic Church. http://www.economist.com/node/21560536

bliti• 11 years ago

A pin. As in the pin that burst the bubble.

monochromatic• 11 years ago

Apple.

Ankaios• 11 years ago

A kilocorn?

Sorry, everyone.

thrill• 11 years ago

An asteroid miner.

imh3• 11 years ago

Can we please stop calling billion dollar companies startups?

loceng• 11 years ago

We should just call them people's projects..

jkestner3• 11 years ago

Not until their P/E first returns a positive number.

imh3• 11 years ago

Does 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/amzn/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).

nickpsecurity• 11 years ago

I'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.

arthur_debert• 11 years ago

It'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

simonebrunozzi• 11 years ago

I believe that Betterment is already past the 1B dollar valuation. Am I wrong?

ftrflyr• 11 years ago

Vertical farming is going to be huge.

tsieling• 11 years ago

50!

If you're going to go listicle, go large.

farnsworth• 11 years ago

It would be nice to see a list like this from 4 years ago.

ChuckFrank• 11 years ago

A 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• 11 years ago

100% 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• 11 years ago

I 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...

prawn3• 11 years ago

What 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.

richmarr2• 11 years ago

There seem to be a few different models, maybe worth iterating them (UK examples).

1) An ordering mechanism for existing delivery services (e.g. JustEat, HungryHouse). The problem here is the delivery experience is opaque, non-standard, and sometimes unreliable. If your food is late, you have to call the restaurant.

2) An ordering and delivery mechanism for existing restaurants (e.g Deliveroo). I think this is the sweet spot because it controls the entire UX, is able to offer a reasonable range of food, and is able to list higher-end restaurants so potentially expands the market for food delivery.

3) All-in-one service (e.g. Deliverance). I think the main problem here is that they're competing with restaurants, which in my opinion will mean they're only ever a niche thing.

My guess is that the scalable 21st century businesses will be in Type 2, and that food delivery (which could eventually be drone-based) and resturants (some of which may eventually use automation) will remain separate. I think the delivery & restaurant businesses seem to have different incentives; restuarants need to optimise for quality & value, and delivery businesses need to optimise for cost and breadth of choice.

shalmanese• 11 years ago

Given that Grubhub/Seamless is valued at 2B+ by the public markets, how can you say it's impossible to have a unicorn in this space?

somberi• 11 years ago

Thumbtack and Sonos?

Companies That May Be the Next $1B Startups

Related Stories