The 12 Most Influential Startups of the Decade That Changed the World

Over the past 10 years, companies have emerged that have become global IT giants and created a new ecosystem in business. Edition IncRussia named 12 startups that had the greatest impact on their industries, the global market and popular culture in the past decade.

1 Airbnb

It took the company three years from its launch in 2008 to overcome the 1 million reservation mark and make the sharing economy concept familiar to users around the world.

The latest service estimate is more than $ 35 billion, which exceeds the market capitalization of Hilton and Marriott hotel chains. In 2020, Airbnb plans to conduct an IPO.

2.Epic Games

Founded in 1991, the computer game development company Epic Games released Fortnite in 2017, which became a new hit and cultural phenomenon. There are over 250 million Fortnite players in the world.

3. Facebook

In 2012, the largest social network crossed the threshold of 1 billion users. In the same year, the company became public. Now 2,45 billion people use Facebook every month.

Over the past few years, the Zuckerberg project has repeatedly shown how important confidentiality is and what it means in the modern world. According to Cambridge Analytica, in 2018, the data of 540 million Facebook users were insecure. The company also found that hackers stole personal information from another 30 million people.

4.Instagram

With an army of big bloggers and influencers, endless scrolling of feeds and the heyday of the economy of mobile attention, Instagram can be considered in many ways the most important application of 2010.

Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger founded the company in 2010. Two years later, Facebook bought it for $ 1 billion. This deal remains the largest social network acquisition in the world.

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5. Slack

The business messenger, created in 2013, has penetrated many offices around the world. Experts believe that his secret of success lies largely in the chosen freemium business model, when the developer offers to use the limited functionality of the product for free. Then, for an additional fee, the client can access the basic services.

6 Snap

When Snap appeared in 2011, many believed that the application would be used for the most part for sexting. This is the name for sending intimate content to other people.

But the founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy accurately predicted a future lack of user attention with their product. Over the next decade, almost every social platform tried to repeat the Snapchat format.

7/8. SpaceX and Tesla

Innovative startups Ilona Mask completely changed the development path of their industries. In 2010, SpaceX became the first private company to successfully launch and launch a spacecraft into orbit. Today, SpaceX's value exceeds $ 33 billion, and the company itself is collaborating with NASA.

In 2018, Tesla became the best-selling electric car in the world. After that, many companies decided to release machines similar in functionality to Tesla. At the same time, the startup Mask has not yet had a single profitable fiscal year.

9. Stripe

In 2009, brothers John and Patrick Collison founded the electronic payment service Stripe. Among the company's customers are not only thousands of small businesses, but also the giants Lyft, Target and Salesforce. The startup’s valuation is $ 35 billion.

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10. Theranos

In 2003, Elizabeth Holmes founded a company that supposedly can conduct a blood test for the minimum amount of biomaterial. In 2013, the startup managed to raise $ 700 million, and two years later, Theranos was estimated at $ 9 billion.

However, in 2018, everything fell apart: companies charged with fraud. Now managers face up to 20 years in prison, and Holmes is obliged to pay a fine of $ 500 thousand. The entrepreneur has become a symbol of the collapse of the system, which offers to "do quickly and break what was built before you."

11.Twitter

A social network that allows you to publish posts of 140 characters, from its inception in 2006 to the present day, has grown into a chronicler of our time and more than once has become a platform for socio-political discussions.

The company's role in the Arab Spring protests, the movement against the #metoo harassment, climate strikes and a million other mini-movements proves its cultural influence.

12 WeWork

With a valuation of $ 47 billion and 12,5 thousand employees in more than 800 offices around the world, WeWork continued to grow rapidly in 2019, until it was overtaken by a global failure.

After filing documents with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the company's valuation fell four times, its founder Adam Neumann lost his position as CEO, and investors and analysts talked about the possibility of bankruptcy of the network. Now WeWork is gradually recovering in order to establish stable growth.

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