A billion-dollar high-tech software company is created in the USA every 3 months.

Ron Conway ( Ron Conway ) once said: "Previously, a company worth a billion dollars was created every 3 months, now every 2". I have a chance to make my list of "billionaires". I tried to limit this list to only high-tech software companies. I also added several companies with a value of about a billion (~ 0.7 billion and more).


I should have clarified that in the context of the quotation, Ron basically meant the high-tech US software companies. There are many such companies outside the United States (especially in China) - the list could be much longer.

Basically he was right. Everything speaks for it.

Software companies, worth 4 billion, were created every year, except for the period 2000-2002.

Break from 2000-2002 associated with the collapse of dotcoms. Everything began to return to normal at the end of 2003 (Skype in August). 2004 was the year of the return of the dot-com era (Facebook, Palantir, Yelp, Evernote).
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Take a look around. In the last 3 months, another billion-dollar company was born.

From this it follows that about 8 companies 2011-2012. in the future will grow significantly. They are still small, but we realize their value in the coming years. I have included several companies founded in 2009-2010, which, I think, have potential. It is much more difficult to arrange the rates for companies 2011-2012.

Google Docs document for updating the list of companies. Thank you phreeza (HN).

Company	Founded	Market capitalization / Value * / Purchase price ^
Solarwinds	1998	$ 3.9 billion
Netsuite	1998	$ 4.3 billion
VMware	1998	$ 37 billion
Opentable	1998 Jul	$ 1 billion
Google	1998 Sep	$ 210 billion
Rackspace	1998 Oct	$ 8 billion
Paypal	1998 Dec	1.5 billion $ ^
Zappos	1999	1.2 billion $ ^
SurveyMonkey	1999	$ 1 billion *
Opsware	1999	1.6 billion $ ^
SalesForce	1999 Mar	$ 19 billion
Shutterfly	1999 Dec	$ 0.9 billion
Netezza	2000	1.7 billion $ ^
ArcSight	2000	1.5 billion $ ^
ExactTarget	2000	$ 1.3 billion
BillMeLater	2000	0.9 billion $ ^
Pandora	2000 Jan	$ 1.3 billion
Tripadvisor	2000 Feb	$ 4.8 billion
SuccessFactors	2001	3.4 billion $ ^
Guidewire	2001	$ 1.5 billion
DealerTrack	2001	$ 1.1 billion
Jive	2001 Feb	$ 0.8 billion
Kiva Systems	2000	$ 0.8 billion ^
LinkedIn	2002 Dec	$ 10 billion
ServiceNow	2003	3.7 billion $
Skype	2003 Aug	$ 8.5 billion ^
Glam media	2003 Sep	$ 0.7 billion *
Palantir	2004	2.5 billion $ *
Splunk	2004	2.6 billion $
Kayak	2004 Jan	$ 1.8 billion
Facebook	2004 Feb	$ 41 billion
Evernote	2004 Sep	$ 1 billion *
Yelp	2004 Oct	$ 1.1 billion
Palo alto networks	2005	$ 3.5 billion
Box	2005	$ 1.2 billion *
Zillow	2005	$ 0.7 billion
Bebo	2005 Jan	0.85 billion $ ^
Homeway	2005 Feb	$ 2 billion *
YouTube	2005 Feb	$ 1.1 billion ^
Workday	2005 Mar	$ 7.7 billion
Millennial media	2006	$ 1.2 billion
Twitter	2006 Mar	$ 8 billion *
Demand media	2006 May	$ 0.7 billion
Nicira	2007	$ 1.2 billion
Gilt groupe	2007	$ 1 billion *
Tumblr	2007 Feb	$ 0.8 billion *
Hulu	2007 Mar	$ 2 billion *
Dropbox	2007 Jun	$ 4 billion *
Livingsocial	2007 Jul	2.9 billion $ *
Zynga	2007 Jul	1.6 billion $
Github	2008 Feb	$ 0.8 billion *
Airbnb	2008 Aug	2.5 billion $ *
Yammer	2008 Sep	1.2 billion $ ^
Groupon	2008 Nov	$ 1.8 billion
Pinterest	2008/09	$ 1 billion *
Square	2009 Feb	3.2 billion $ *
Storm8	2009 Mar	$ 1 billion *
Quora	2009 Jun	~
GetAround	2009 Sep	~
Fab	2010 Feb	$ 0.7 billion *
Instagram	2010 Mar	1 billion $ ^
Stripe	2010 Jun	~
Skillshare	2010 Nov	~

Market capitalization (Market cap) is for publicly traded companies (November 2012)
* - the assessment of companies "according to rumors", so to speak, "what the wind carried"
^ - the price of the transaction, with the last purchase of the company (for example, Skype was sold several times)
~ - including companies that, in my opinion, have a chance to grow to a billion dollars
I could not find exact dates for most companies.

Let me know if I missed something.

translator's note:

I personally was surprised to find that I know only about 15% of the companies on the list. Interestingly, am I so behind the times and do not feel the trends of software development at all? Or is it our common Russian misfortune?