Ok, Facebook. But what’s the next hottest company?
A year ago, we asked readers which company they thought was the hottest, i.e, offering the biggest chance of making them a millionaire, either through a pending sale or an IPO. Key question for job-seekers. Two companies that came to mind were Facebook, and YouTube - but in comments, readers listed almost every company of note.
If you’d have gotten into Facebook or YouTube around the time of that post, you’d be very fortunate right now. YouTube snagged at a huge $1.6 billion acquisition offer from Google, despite doubts about its business model. And one commenter at the time said Facebook, reported to have just been valued at the nine-digit level in a venture round, was too late to join. But that’s not true. It’s now clearly worth more than $1 billion, so we’re up to ten digits, and we’re only 11 months on.
So this year, Facebook still reigns supreme as the private company du jour.
You could argue it is now too late to join Facebook. But our opinion is, it’s still hot. But who comes in second? Tough question, and this year we can’t decide. Digg and Photobucket each got a singular mention last year. They’ve since both become very popular, and are both being bandied about as worth far more than $100 million. Do they strike you as fundamentally significant companies? There’s Glam Media, with a reported value of $150 million, but does the media company, boasting an albeit innovative business model, have legs and imagination to get really big? (See our coverage here: Digg, Photobucket (scroll down) and Glam).
A string of other companies are going public, or have filed to go public garnering high values. Aruba is just the latest, with an IPO giving it a market cap of $1 billion, for example, and there are others of this ilk — but do these communications and infrastructure companies have what it takes to become breakout companies?
What do you think? What’s are the hottest two private companies?
And please don’t say Justin.TV (coverage here) or Twitter (see coverage, lighter, and more serious) — at least, not yet! And which ones are we missing?
We’ll follow up in a few days when we think there’s a verdict.
23 Comments
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Ze Mode said:
Linden Lab’s Second Life.
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James Nicholson said:
How about Ning? Might not be as far along as Digg or Photobucket, but in terms of generating buzz you’ve got to rank it pretty high.
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james said:
what about netsuite
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Sand Hill said:
Forget Web 2.0 - Web 3.D is where it’s at and the word from the top of the hill is YOICK…
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Natalie Duckett said:
Art.com
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Corey Reese said:
Tesla!
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Makeitbig said:
Digg-be serious! Glam…flat traffic, narrow audience.
NetSuite will be the 07 winner -
Rich Pearson said:
They will unleash the potential of the online content economy http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-healey2apr02,0,2473225.story?coll=la-opinion-center
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rachna said:
Largest no of links …great idea in infancy .
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Chris said:
An alternative question would be ‘What’s The Hottest Company NOT In Silicon Valley’.
And in my view, factoring in innovation, potential, and the sheer joy I get from using it, that company is last.fm.
c.
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Scott Epstein said:
Meebo, which is innovating in an established space and building a new IM network and a massive audience.
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Mitchel said:
It’s absolutely AdMob. Those guys seem to hit a new home run every week while building their company with professionalism and grace.
Art.com was a nice mention, too.
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Marcus said:
Thank god … at first when I saw the title “Hotest Internet Company” in my RSS Feed I thought it was Valleywag.. and figured it was Nick Douglas posting about Justin.tv or Twitter again.. thank god it wasn’t..
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Alaska Miller said:
Digg is as hot as two pandabear-looking humanoids dryhumping each other in an empty casino in Second Life while chatting on Meebo. Get real.
This question is being asked too soon. Try again in September, then we can definitely tell you. On a lark, I would say Twitter.
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Emre Sokullu said:
meebo, which I believe, will enter in webos space in the near future.
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Pran Kurup said:
I think its LinkedIn. It is relatively well-established, mature, supposedly profitable and useful to its users.
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jc said:
The hottest startup will be a software company, not a social crapper hole. No it will not be a web os company, it will probably be something that changes communication (email) and kills spam (email) and has social network features.
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Enrique said:
The new start up will come from green energy:
Nanosolar looks good. -
heidi said:
I agree with JC; so many new social networking sites without any technology advantages or IP. All of them appears to be me too with a different market approach, niche or ways to attract user bases. I also agree with JC on the next trend will be associated with new start-ups in the arena of changing the communications landscape. Companies such as http://www.lignup.com and http://www.bluenote.com are making a difference enabling service providers and large enterprises to enable and offer integrated telecommunications; e.g. integrating your CRM with VoIP, Web Services Telecom and etc. Another area of interest is companies that are reviving collaboration. WebEx just got bought by Cisco and there are numerous companies that are starting such services or similar with a different audience/market twist. One company that I see making a splash in the near term is http://www.heycosmo.com, which offers free interactivity. Free web-conference, video collaboration with VoIP and etc. with bunch of features. Too many social networking sites and it is getting lame!
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Coolio said:
Dude, Miniclip.com is bigger than all those sites with 34 million unique users per month - source Comscore Media Metrix, Dec, 2006. Stop reading the (off the net) newspapers written by old age reporters and start reading the Internet reports to see what’s hot on the Internet.
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Mike said:
I think Blue Lithium is the hottest company besides Facebook. They had revenues approaching $100 million in 2006 which should put their value near a billion dollars given their fast growth. They are in the Ad Banner business.
