The Global Unicorns Universe

67 Comments

1. 

   Dave Hendricks April 21, 2014 at 12:31 pm

   Doesn’t Unicorn imply some form of product uniqueness? Or are these just standout investments, meaning they are unusual since they will return 10X+ for early stage investors? Thanks for putting the list together, good compendium.
2. 

   big data analytics April 21, 2014 at 5:28 pm

   I guess the effect of economic downturn wasn’t just on the US …
3. 

   William Mougayar April 21, 2014 at 6:47 pm

   In this context, it’s the latter; i.e. standout investments/valuations, companies that rise above the frey. Thanks.
4. 

   William Mougayar April 21, 2014 at 6:47 pm

   In reference to what years?
5. 

   big data analytics April 21, 2014 at 6:49 pm

   After 2007…
6. 

   William Mougayar April 22, 2014 at 11:01 am

   i see. but the last 2 years have been good i think, no?
7. 

   disqus_0YZJyPGDVT April 23, 2014 at 4:02 am

   I don’t think xero is valued at $12b, one to many 0’s?
8. 

   Tyler McNally April 23, 2014 at 5:28 am

   Did you pay for “mattermark data” which is actually crunchbase data? or to ask differently, does matttermark have financing data that does not exist within crunchbase?
9. 

   Mairi Johnson April 23, 2014 at 7:03 am

   BetFair should be on that list. It was founded in 2000 in the UK and was valued at IPO at $2.2bn.
10. 

    William Mougayar April 23, 2014 at 7:31 am

    you’re right. it’s $3.5B
    http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/XRO:NZ
11. 

    William Mougayar April 23, 2014 at 7:39 am

    Just added it, at $1.5B which is most recent documented valuation. Thanks!
    http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/04/22/uk-betfair-idUKBRE93L06Y20130422
12. 

    csertoglu April 23, 2014 at 8:10 am

    William do you plan to include companies that have never received outside funding, but would be assumed to have EV>$250m?
13. 

    JLM April 23, 2014 at 8:28 am

    .
    What a great list. Something that should be developed and published annually. Very well done.

    Well played.

    JLM
    .
14. 

    FAKE GRIMLOCK April 23, 2014 at 8:39 am

    MOST IMPORTANT SUCCESSFUL STARTUPS ONES YOU NOT HEARD OF.
15. 

    DanielHorowitz April 23, 2014 at 8:44 am

    Commented on Fred’s blog but probably better here…
    Here are a few more: Rally software, Heroku, Solar City, Kiva systems,
    Admob, Foundation Medicine, Nanosolar, Stubhub, Hotel Tonight, Instacart
    (Rumored), Wildfire Interactive, Nextdoor, Spacex, Quirky, Pacific
    Biosciences, Practice Fusion, Brightcove. Fleetmatics (?)
16. 

    Guillaume Lerouge April 23, 2014 at 9:43 am

    Thanks for the great effort! Regarding Neolane, I believe it was originally a French company, prior to getting acquired by Adobe: http://www.societe.com/societe/neolane-438384406.html
17. 

    Elia Freedman April 23, 2014 at 10:38 am

    Great work, William. Can’t help but wonder how many venture backed businesses this is out of? How many business starts in general? Very long odds, is my guess.
18. 

    William Mougayar April 23, 2014 at 10:44 am

    Thousands for sure. Thx
19. 

    William Mougayar April 23, 2014 at 10:46 am

    Yes, if the info is available.
20. 

    William Mougayar April 23, 2014 at 10:46 am

    🙂
21. 

    William Mougayar April 23, 2014 at 10:47 am

    Thanks. I will maintain it continuously so it’s a living / real time reference.
22. 

    William Mougayar April 23, 2014 at 10:48 am

    Thx. Will update it.
23. 

    Wonyoung Kim April 23, 2014 at 11:05 am

    Here are several more – PA Semi, Invensense, Primesense, Beceem, Inphi, all semiconductor companies (a rare breed).
24. 

    Ada Chen April 23, 2014 at 11:16 am

    Great work – really getting a lot out of the data. Would have expected more Canadian companies (maybe in a few years?) and would love to see investment numbers on rounds/VCs/etc (I realize it’d be difficult). Thanks for putting this together! Can’t wait to see what this list looks like in a few years or even a few months.

    Tiny note – South Korea is misspelled for Coupang!
25. 

    JLM April 23, 2014 at 11:29 am

    .
    Revenue stream. Publishing opportunity.

    JLM
    .
26. 

    pointsnfigures April 23, 2014 at 11:29 am

    Add EchoGlobal Logistics and Innerworkings. Both IPOs out of Chicago-Lightbank guys. Belly might be there too.
27. 

    jenslapinski April 23, 2014 at 11:33 am

    Trivago in Germany
28. 

    Navneet Gosal April 23, 2014 at 11:34 am

    I believe Mandiant and NetWitness out of the DC area were both north of 250M in the last 3 years. Would be interesting to see a geographical breakdown in US of these
29. 

    jenslapinski April 23, 2014 at 11:34 am

    Delivery Hero, Germany
30. 

    jenslapinski April 23, 2014 at 11:35 am

    Natural Motion, UK
31. 

    jenslapinski April 23, 2014 at 11:36 am

    Beebo, UK
32. 

    mark sugarman April 23, 2014 at 12:06 pm

    Happy to help contribute a few names, love to see a comprehensive list:
    OPOWER 2007- NYSE IPO 2014 (OPWR)
    Aerohive 2006- IPO 2014
    Five9 2001- NASDAQ
    Would suggest looking at IPO lists
33. 

    Danielle Morrill April 23, 2014 at 12:33 pm

    William has been wonderful about helping spread the word about Mattermark, and he collected a lot of additional data that was not in our database to complete his list (Valuations, exit year, etc.) — we know how time consuming this is, and are so grateful that he put this list together for the community. We make special arrangements with bloggers from time to time to exchange free Mattermark services for blog posts that help raise awareness of our tools. Thanks William!
34. 

    Tyler McNally April 23, 2014 at 1:10 pm

    Makes sense! Mattermark is doing some really cool things, exciting to see the growth. My question was more specifically around data attribution -> is the data (financing, dates, country, etc.) here that is from mattermark data that is unique/distinct/different from the crunchbase data?
35. 

    Wade Friedel April 23, 2014 at 2:22 pm

    Ubiquiti Networks $UBNT founded in 2003 as Pera Networks reincorporated as Ubiquiti in 2005.
36. 

    Hendrik Laubscher April 23, 2014 at 3:37 pm

    William, this is a great post.

    I think you are missing a rather large one in terms of ecommerce and an up and comer:

    Alibaba (China) Started in 1999, valuation – ? anything between $ 80 -160 Billion – going public soon

    Snapdeal (India) Started in 2010, $240 million invested – private
37. 

    Srivatsan Sivanandan April 23, 2014 at 3:42 pm

    Myntra (from India; started 2007) was recently acquired by Flipkart for well north of $250M http://www.crunchbase.com/acquisition/1fede19770fb9e2945ee23bf7df9d72e
38. 

    g_b_c April 23, 2014 at 8:02 pm

    A couple more from Australia – Campaign Monitor and BigCommerce.
39. 

    William Mougayar April 23, 2014 at 11:55 pm

    In my experience, Mattermark’s data is quite comprehensive, and has a really easy & powerful user interface.
40. 

    ek April 24, 2014 at 1:12 am

    Pandora, OpenX, Adconion, Demand Media, Brightroll, MySpace, SpaceX, Tapjoy, Lynda.com, JustFab, Heroku, Warby Parker, Solar City, Hotel Tonight
41. 

    Sakari Sipola April 24, 2014 at 2:23 am

    Thanks for putting the list together. One small point – Supercell is from Finland not Sweden 🙂
42. 

    David Fraga April 24, 2014 at 1:17 pm

    Great list. One addition: Shutterstock (NYSE: SSTK) which was started in 2003 and currently has a ~$2.5 billion market cap.
43. 

    William Mougayar April 24, 2014 at 10:46 pm

    oops. fixed. thx
44. 

    William Mougayar April 24, 2014 at 11:09 pm

    Campaign Monitor is in @ $600M. I’m checking on BigCommerce & you’ll see it if it checks. Thanks a lot.
45. 

    gusguida April 24, 2014 at 11:26 pm

    Great work, thanks!
    Some startups from Brazil: Buscapé, acquired by Naspers in 2009 by 340 million (total valuation was 391 million at that time); Hotel Urbano, valuation around 600 million nowadays; Netshoes; Dafiti; Submarino.
46. 

    William Mougayar April 25, 2014 at 12:32 am

    SF bought Heroku for $212M, so they are below the cut.

    Instacart is in at $400M, and so is Rally and I was on the fence for Solar City because it’s not pure soft-tech, but I added them now!

    I’m going through the others, one by one, and you’ll either see them or not in 2-3 days, depending if they meet the criteria. Thanks a lot.
47. 

    William Mougayar April 25, 2014 at 12:35 am

    yep. just added them. thanks.
48. 

    William Mougayar April 25, 2014 at 2:01 am

    Perfect. Thanks. I will check them and add the ones that pass the mustard.
49. 

    elliewheeler April 25, 2014 at 11:36 am

    Great list. Collective is actually based in NYC, so that should be USA not Canada.

    Also, Extreme Reach should be added to this list.
50. 

    William Mougayar April 27, 2014 at 1:14 am

    thanks. Great add-ons!

    Those that made are: pandora, openX,demandmedia, solarcity, spaceX,justfab,tapjoy, heroku, hotel tonight.
51. 

    Mark Essel April 27, 2014 at 1:24 am

    This is some good work @William , just catching up on avc and saw your collection. Interesting to see the industry trends at very high level.

    Always be curating.

    Curious about one thing, if a company is acquired @250 mil, how does it have the ability to become a “billion dollar company” (ie heroku etc)
52. 

    William Mougayar April 28, 2014 at 12:21 am

    ah, typically we stop tracking that company after it gets acquired, but there are cases where the company stays separated and gets re-acquired at a higher valuation, but these are rare cases.
53. 

    Tom April 28, 2014 at 9:56 am

    One from the UK – bet365, founded in 2000 I believe
54. 

    Mark Essel April 28, 2014 at 4:56 pm

    just thought of a potential that I didn’t remember seeing on the list (may have missed it)
    github, I know they raised a decent chunk, assume their valuation is Nx that number
55. 

    salima April 29, 2014 at 10:33 am

    TripAdvisor
    Quidsi (Diapers.com)
    BillMeLater
    Coupons
    Ngmoco
    Tinyprints
    Huffington Post
    Docusign
    Glam
    Living Social
    Manta
    Nasty Gal?
    Path?
    Reddit
    Stella & Dot
    360buy
    Ietv
    Cloudary
    trivago
    Gmarket
    Buzzfeed
    RightMedia
    Playdom
    AdMob
    Club Penguin
    Apartments.com
    Meetic
    Lovefilm
    Revolution Money
    Adify
    Fotolia
    BlueLithium
    Last.fm
    Photobucket
    Tacoda
    GittiGidiyor

    Blue Apron
56. 

    William Mougayar April 29, 2014 at 12:01 pm

    thanks. yep, i typically go by the last known raise, unless there is new data otherwise.
57. 

    William Mougayar April 29, 2014 at 12:13 pm

    Good ones. I corrected Collective and added Extreme Reach.
    I estimated the valuation of Extreme Reach to be 1.2B based on $300 mil in sales. Do you think it’s in the ball park?
58. 

    davey_cont April 30, 2014 at 4:43 pm

    blinkx. public in 2007. current market cap is $550M.
59. 

    William Mougayar May 11, 2014 at 10:08 am

    Added it. Thanks!
60. 

    David Rosenthal June 4, 2014 at 12:11 am

    A few more from Seattle: PopCap Games, Big Fish, Inrix.
61. 

    awaldstein June 28, 2014 at 4:51 pm

    Good to see Open English here.

    Quite a success story. Just recently met with one of the founders.
62. 

    William Mougayar June 28, 2014 at 6:26 pm

    Cool!
63. 

    Koh Zhili July 1, 2014 at 6:59 pm

    Hello there,
    How did you arrive at the valuation for each of these companies?
    Is there some way you calculated it or gleaned it off the web?

    Cheers
64. 

    Mohit Mehta December 28, 2014 at 10:12 pm

    William – this is fantastic! Couple more contributions to the list:

    1. Snapdeal – It’s in the 3-horse race in India’s rapidly growing e-commerce market. Recently, raised $627M from Softbank http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/snapdeal

    2. Cumulus Networks – Data-Center Networking with Linux. Recently, valued at $300M – http://www.businessinsider.com/cumulus-dell-deal-delivered-300m-valuation-2014-4 http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/cumulus-networks
65. 

    Ken Sielecki March 30, 2015 at 11:17 pm

    Hi William this is a really cool list. Would you be looking at updating it with Q1 2015 data? If you are interested I think it would also be helpful to show the change in valuation (where available) for the unicorns as done in this breakout post (http://www.breakoutlist.com/unicorn-club/). Thanks again for contributing this information to the community!
66. 

    William Mougayar March 31, 2015 at 12:22 am

    Thanks Ken! I do have an update in the works.
    Stay tuned 😉
67. 

    Yousaf Bhattiiii April 23, 2015 at 7:06 am

    Fred’s Hackpad was an excellent jumping point for a more complete and global list, and it was an essential starting point for my own analysis. But it needed
    lots of scrubbing, and also was missing several companies. So, last
    December,
    This was amazing … and wonderful sharing .. softwarescrack