Massively successful startups have historically been rare. Emerging to the wonder of the business world, companies like Yahoo, Google, Amazon and Facebook seemed such aberrations they became known as unicorns.
But today?s business playing field sports a herd of them?over 80, in fact. Companies such as Dropbox, Uber, Snapchat, WhatsApp and Pinterest have raised vast sums of capital and reached high valuations. But what does the next generation of top startups look like?
Together with TrueBridge Capital Partners,* we went in search of young companies with enough momentum to reach the upper echelon and comprise the next generation of unicorns, and detailed our findings in the latest issue of Forbes Magazine.
The Next Billion Dollar Startups
Startups that jump out to billion-dollar valuations are so rare they’ve come to be known as unicorns. We at FORBES, in cooperation with TrueBridge Capital Partners,* went hunting for the next wave of startups that are flying under the radar but getting ready to pop. We surveyed venture firms for their best picks, reviewed the data they came back with, did some reporting and analysis and produced the following list of 25 companies.
Say hello to tomorrow’s unicorns.
We surveyed over 90 VC firms and asked them to nominate their most promising startups, the ones likeliest to reach sky-high valuations. We asked for revenue figures, valuation history, launch dates and customer counts.
We whittled the results down to 35 promising companies and subjected them to our own grading formula, keeping in mind the track records and skills of the founding teams, and chose 25 startups we think have billion-dollar valuations in their futures (indeed, three of these firms hit that milestone in the past month as we toiled to cover them). (See, Unicorn Rush: Three Startups That Beat Forbes? Next To A Billion List)
What we learned was that technology is transforming industries the world over and investors are backing young companies that promise to change the face of e-commerce, food tech, financial services, and the enterprise.
We took a look at some of the trends we?re seeing in the high-value startup space and filed reports on the industries our 25 startups are dismantling, as well as the venture capital firms laying the most bets on hot companies. We also found out why venture-backed companies are taking longer to go public, how that affects valuations, and what venture capitalists are doing in response.
Read more at FORBES
