August 6, 1991 CERN, the first ever web page went live. This website contained information
on the World Wide Web project and just what the heck this web thing was all about. That
would be the first cog in the internet machine. It’s difficult to image a time period when
a business or service didn’t have an internet equivalent. We seem to be in the midst of
a web startup resurgence similar to the Dot-com bubble that ran roughly from 1995 to 2002.
The web based startup cataloger AngelList cites over 4.5 Million companies in various
stages of development looking for everything from employment to procuring seed funding.
According to Internet Live Stats there are over 1.5 billion registered websites with
about 200 million active sites. That’s a long way to come in 27 years. Hello and welcome
to another episode of The Infographics Show, today we're going to look at which websites
started as simple hobby projects, and turned into a multi billion dollar business.
Starting at Number 15, Coupons.com. This North California company was founded by a finance
executive Steven Boal in 1998. Boal wanted to to simplify the traditional coupon ritual
he observed during his father-in-law’s journey to the front porch for the sunday paper. He
would take the paper to the kitchen table where he would go to work with scissors in
hand to collect the days coupons. Boal met with a former colleague over coffee to map
on a paper napkin in pencil what would become the blueprint coupons.com. Coupons are often
considered a form of currency, therefore manufacturers require strict security and print limits before
a digital coupon can be seen as valid. Boal worked tirelessly for three years collaborating
with manufacturers to allow digital coupons into circulation. It finally paid off with
the first digital coupon going live on April of 2001. Eight years later Coupons.com would
come to account for half of the redeemed coupons in the United States compared to the tradition
coupons found in Sunday newspapers; offering digital coupons for over 2,000 brands including
everything from Coca-cola, to Dove, to Hasbro. Coupons.com’s estimated value had reached
1 billion in 2011, proving there’s always a market for people looking to save money
on daily purchases.
Number 14, Draftkings.com. Estimated at a networth around $1.2 Billion. Draftkings was
established by former Vistaprint Employees who operated out of their own homes to produce
a one-on-one baseball competition to coincide with 2012s opening day for Major League Baseball.
The company quickly raised millions of dollars from venture capital firms and outside investors.
By 2014 the company reported awarding $50 million in prizes for the year 2013, quickly
turning it into the second largest company in daily fantasy sports. ESPN and FOX Sports
took a gamble on the company by entering an advertising deal only to have ESPN back out
a year later due to legal uncertainties surrounding the service. As for Draftkings, it seems like
they have been placing all the right bets to become a success.
Number 13, BuzzFeed. Originally a small side arm of the Huffington Post in 2006 utilizing
an algorithm with no actual writers or editors to cull stories from around the world that
were “showing stirrings of virality”- or in other words articles that could be passed
around generating “buzz”. BuzzFeed has been developed into several branches including
BuzzFeed News, BuzzFeed Video, and other various video projects. With even us indulging in
their infamous quizzes, it’s easy to see how BuzzFeed became a $1.5 Billion Dollar
company.
Number 12. Squarespace. Successfully building itself as the most accessible site-creation
tool for anyone to use. Squarespace has made a true name for itself hosting more than one
million websites as of 2016 and being valued at $1.7 Billion. It was originally created
in 2003 for personal use by founder Anthony Casalena while attending the University of
Maryland. Casalena was the sole employee and received funding from his father plus grants
from the University Incubator Program. Squarespace.com was essentially created out of a dorm room.
Squarespace has bought advertisements at the Superbowl every year since 2015, and their
logo is featured prominently on the uniforms of the New York Knicks. There is a good chance
that if any of these startup companies were created today, they’d be looking to squarespace
for their website.
Number 11. Blue Apron. Founders Matt Salzberg and Ilia Papas left their Silicon Valley Venture
Firm to create a startup company. Trying several ideas and raising funds from family and friends,
they eventually landed on a seemingly simple idea: Make chef recommended recipes seeming
effortless to recreate, by providing pre-measured ingredients and locally procured food. The
two set out to create a sustaining model of working with local farmers and completing
shipments within 24 hours of order to make the meal as fresh as can be. Beginning in
a small commercial kitchen out of Queens, New York, the first 30 orders were prepared,
a courier was then hired to mail these orders across Manhattan. Occasionally running low
on ingredients, the founders would have to run to the local grocery store to complete
the order. Even though customers have been in a decline due to some controversies, Blue
Apron is still holding strong with a value of $2 Billion dollars.
Number 10. Paypal. In the 19 years of Paypal's operation, it has rose to prominence as the
go to money transfer service for small business and most online shopping. Originally created
by a security software company, Confinity, as a money transfer service to pay their employees,
it was Elon Musk himself, who in 2000, as head of X.com, merged with Confinity to drop
all other banking services and solely focus on Paypal. eBay purchased the money transfer
company in 2002 for $1.5 billion with 70 percent of eBay auctions accepting Paypal payments.
Currently Paypal has upwards of 244 million active users without ever needing to advertise.
Number 9. Spotify. This swedish music streaming service named after a misheard word shouted
at the founders, was later figured to be a combination between “spot” and “Identify”.
Now holding 191 million daily users with 87 million of them as paying subscribers and
a estimated value at $3 billion dollars, it’s made streaming the most popular way to listen
to music. Founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon may have started their billion dollar streaming
platform by sharing mp3 music files between their computers, but their intentions where
to always break away from illegal methods of music distribution on the internet. Though
the site has received criticism for its treatment of artists, record companies knew they had
to open their catalogues if they wanted to lessen the impact of music piracy on their
sales. In exchange, Ek and Lorentzon had to provide 20 percent of their company to the
record labels. Spotify has paid billions to rights owners as a reminder that some pay
is better than the alternative of piracy. Launching in 2008, Spotify brings sweet music
to the ears of millions for over a decade.
Number 8. Credit Karma. Don’t let the free credit report aspect fool you, Credit Karma
has earned itself an impressive $4 Billion dollar value. Founder and CEO Kenneth Lin,
a Chinese immigrant with a background working for consumer credit, felt that people should
have free access to their credit and financial data. He founded the service in 2007 creating
a simple homepage where customers could only submit their email addresses… and that’s
about it. Lin knew in order to show interest in his site he had to gain prospective members
even ahead of the beta. The 2008 economic recession hit the company hard, stagnating
growth for over a year. By the time the site was hitting a million members the company
itself was only being sustained by around five people with one engineer manning the
entire backend. The growth kept rising as Credit Karma continued to add help features
at no cost. They used that money to fund ad campaigns which utilized employees themselves
with little to no acting experience. This San Francisco Based company has altered the
way customers interact with their finances, empowering them to understand the true impact
of their Credit scores. Like the company itself, small details can lead to big changes.
Number 7. eBay. A broken Laser pointer was the first auction won for $14.83 in 1995.
When asked by the Founder why they purchased a broken item, the Winner replied “I’m
a collector of broken laser pointers”, and thus securing a need for an auction based
site where anything can be bid on. By 1998 with 30 employees, the site has generated
half a million users with revenues upwards of $4.7 million. With acquisitions at points
of Paypal, Craigslist, Skype, and Stubhub, eBay has secured itself with a value at $6.2
Billion dollars with little deviation from its humble beginnings and broken laser pointers
for those who wish to bid on them.
Number 6. Pinterest. The sheer equity of these small sites really start to shoot up, with
pinterest being estimated at $10.4 Billion. Being a fairly young site founded in 2009,
operating out of a small apartment, the site grants customers the ability to save images
and categorize them on different board, allowing them to create communities and follow other
users. Nine months later, the website had generated 10 thousand users. The early popular
categories involved home, arts and crafts, style/fashion, and food. By 2016 Pinterest
had generated 150 million active users with 70 million being in the United States alone.
The interest in pinning pictures doesn’t seem to be dying anytime soon with expansion
still growing throughout the world.
Number 5. Twitter. 335 million active users make up this $11 billion dollar messaging
site. The site originally stemmed from a brainstorming session for the company Odeo, in what was
suppose to be a platform for podcasts. After apple launched their podcast platform with
Itunes, founders Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Christopher Stone, and Even Williams decided
to make something else entirely. The domain for twitter.com had already been taken by
the time the company was founded, so the initial name branded the social site twttr without
the vowels “I” and “E”. The founders and the previous 14 Odeo employees went to
work on the new platform where a text didn’t just go to one person, but was instead broadcasted
to all friends. And with that, the first tweet went out on march 2006 reading, “just setting
up my twttr”. Later, the name was properly changed to Twitter from the rightful definition
of a ‘short burst of inconsequential information’, as well as the chirping sound a bird makes.
Now one of the largest social media apps popularizing the hashtag, its difficult to find a person
who hasn’t sent out a Tweet or two in their lifetime.
Number 4. Air BnB. Founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia were unable to pay their rent after
moving to San Francisco in late 2007. In order to make up the difference they decided to
inflate an air mattress in their livingroom to create a makeshift Bed n Breakfast. The
name stems from this very setup with the Air in Air BnB standing for the Air inflated bed
that laid on their living room floor. The business was up and running by the next year
with their first patrons being overflow from the Industrial Designers Society of America,
who were having difficulties booking hotels for a conference held in the city. The founders
then got creative, making special edition breakfast cereals with then Presidential candidates
Barack Obama as “Obama o’s” and John McCain for “Cap’n McCains”, being sold
for $40 dollars each to generate $30 thousand for company incubation. This eventually turned
into the $29.3 Billion dollar company that has created the leading room rental service,
allowing a host to rent out rooms or entire houses. Ashton Kutcher and his investment
company, A-Grade Investments, put a significant amount into the company in 2011, helping the
growth exponentially. Recently, the company has announced Air BnB Plus which vetts a collection
of homes for quality of services, comfort, and design as well as Beyond, which will offer
luxury vacation rentals which ensures that regardless of where you go there will be a
place for you to stay.
Number 3. Instagram. Founded by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger who were big fans of Kentucky
whiskeys. This love reflected in their first iteration of a location-based iphone app name
promptly as “Burbn”. The app was built from the ground up in just a few months with
the concept being: Check-in at a location, make plans for future check-ins, earn “points”
for hanging out with friends, and post pictures from the meet ups. The app however, was not
a success. It featured a clunky design and complicated features. With this failure did
come a chance to learn. The creative duo found that the one successful feature from the defunct
Burbn was the app’s photo-sharing capabilities. This lead to the complete strip down of the
app to a basic core feature of taking pictures, comment on photos, and liking them. They wanted
to remain simple but added filters of flare and variety without overdoing it. On October
12, 2010 Burbn had vanished leaving the app known as Instagram. Gaining its name as a
hybrid between instant camera and telegram, the app would go on to be purchased by Facebook
for $300 million in cash plus an additional 23 million shares of stocks. Currently, Instagram
is estimated to be worth over a hundred billion dollars and has built itself as one of the
keystone social networking apps.
Number 2. Facebook. While in his second year at Harvard University in 2003, Mark Zuckerberg
found that Havard was lacking a universal student directory known as a “face book”
in an online platform. This would have typically contained a photo along with some basic information.
The university showed dissatisfactory interest into creating such a directory that Zuckerberg
took it upon himself to create Harvard's Face Book, which he had claimed that he could accomplish
within a week. He quickly got to work on creating what would be called Thefacebook. Zuckerberg
found himself in hot water when accused of stealing the idea for a similar social network
titled HarvardConnection.com. He insisted that it was not theft, but rather a competitive
program. Initially being restricted to Harvard University, more than half the undergraduates
at Harvard had registered for the service within the first month. Zuckerberg assembled
a small team of fellow students to help the expanse to Columbia, Stanford, and Yale with
all Ivy League colleges soon following behind. A year after the creation, Zuckerberg had
moved the operation to Palo Alto, California with ex-Napster founder Sean Parker, who insisted
on the dropping of the “the”, This created what will forever be known as Facebook. With
Zuckerberg being the youngest ever self-made Billionaire at 23 with a net value of $138
billion dollars and over 2 Billion monthly active users, Facebook has truly changed the
social landscape for years to come.
And now we come to Number 1. Named after the biggest river in the world, Jeff Bezos had
hopes to make Amazon the biggest bookstore in the world. Former vice-president of D.
E. shaw & Co. Bezos moved to Seattle, Washington to start what would soon become the third
most valuable company in the United States behind Apple and Microsoft. Bezos worked out
of his garage writing his entire business plan on a cross-continental flight from New
York to Seattle. Founding the company in 1994 with a generous $300 thousand investment from
his parents, Bezos knew the risk warning many early investors that there was 70 percent
chance of failure or bankruptcy, which nearly happened in 2002 when rapid spending caused
financial distress. He closed many distribution centers and laid off 14 percent of employees.
A year later they had fully recovered, turning a $400 million profit. Amazon quickly went
from a singular online bookstore with the first sell being Douglas Hofstadter’s mouthful
of a title Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Modules of the Fundamental Mechanisms
of Thought, to the online retailer that sells everything “from A to Z”. In 2018 the
company announced that they have reached 100 million Amazon Prime subscribers. From small
beginnings of a book retailer to being a company that earned $177.9 billion in revenue for
2017, makes Amazon the ultimate simple site to create an empire.
It doesn’t take much for a simple idea to be turned into a multi-billion dollar idea.
It appears most companies truly thrive from filling a unique niche that was otherwise
not as available, from coupons, to picture boards, to a social media juggernaut. It’s
unpredictable what companies will be the next Billion dollar site. Tell us what companies
you believe are on the rise, or which ones you were surprised to make this list in the
comments below. If you enjoyed this video be sure to check out our video 10 Most Dangerous
Hackers of All Time, And as always sure to Like, share, subscribe. See you next time!
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