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Meet the Minotaurs - startups that have raised more than $1 billion
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2019 Feb 24, 1:25pm 1,114 views 2 comments
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1
anonymous
2019 Feb 24, 1:27pm
The 56 private companies that have raised more than $1 billion in equity capital.
Here, now: The world's 56 minotaurs — our term for companies that have raised more than $1 billion — generated for Axios by PitchBook. Tap on the graphic to get the names of the companies and how much they've raised.
The big picture: In aggregate, they've raised more than $150 billion of equity capital. That's an average of $2.8 billion each.
•The two biggest minotaurs are closely affiliated with large public companies: Ant Financial is related to Alibaba, while Juul received $12.8 billion from tobacco giant Altria. Even so, Ant's $14 billion Series C included many big-name American financial investors.
•The fifth-largest minotaur, ByteDance, is the company that owns social network TikTok.
•The largest European minotaur is Auto1, a Germany-based online car dealer that Softbank bought into last year.
Interactive graphic in the link - click on or hover over any colored dot to see the company name and the amount of equity capital
https://www.axios.com/minotaurs-startup-company-billion-list-76ec56cc-682d-4d9c-8aa5-6bab9b6d4c80.html
Here, now: The world's 56 minotaurs — our term for companies that have raised more than $1 billion — generated for Axios by PitchBook. Tap on the graphic to get the names of the companies and how much they've raised.
The big picture: In aggregate, they've raised more than $150 billion of equity capital. That's an average of $2.8 billion each.
•The two biggest minotaurs are closely affiliated with large public companies: Ant Financial is related to Alibaba, while Juul received $12.8 billion from tobacco giant Altria. Even so, Ant's $14 billion Series C included many big-name American financial investors.
•The fifth-largest minotaur, ByteDance, is the company that owns social network TikTok.
•The largest European minotaur is Auto1, a Germany-based online car dealer that Softbank bought into last year.
Interactive graphic in the link - click on or hover over any colored dot to see the company name and the amount of equity capital
https://www.axios.com/minotaurs-startup-company-billion-list-76ec56cc-682d-4d9c-8aa5-6bab9b6d4c80.html
2
anonymous
2019 Feb 25, 3:38am
Peloton, which sells digital exercise bikes, has reportedly chosen banks to lead an IPO valued at more than $8 billion .
Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan will lead the IPO, according to Bloomberg, which reported that the deal could value the company at more than $8 billion.
Founded in 2012, Peloton sells high-end exercise bikes and treadmills, as well as subscriptions to content that streams on the machines, and separate digital exercise classes. The basic Peloton bike costs $2,245, and a Peloton treadmill costs $4,295.
Peloton was last valued at $4.15 billion in a 2018 funding round led by Technology Crossover Ventures, according to PitchBook. It's backed by others including Wellington Management, Fidelity Investments and Kleiner Perkins.
Since it sells consumer goods, Peloton could be considered a retail company, but it's expected to price on the public markets at similar multiples to other technology companies, one person familiar with the company said.
Peloton did not respond to a request for comment.
https://www.businessinsider.com/peloton-has-reportedly-picked-banks-for-an-ipo-which-could-value-it-at-more-than-8-billion-2019-2
The inside story of Peloton, a fitness media company that was turned down by over 400 investors but is now worth $4 billion (2018)
Peloton CEO John Foley estimates that his company was rejected between 5,000 to 6,000 times by 400+ investors.
When John Foley first pitched his idea for a fitness startup called Peloton to venture firms along the storied, four-lane
stretch of Sand Hill Road six years ago, investors were wary.
“Every round, for six rounds,” Foley said, recalling Peloton’s first three years of fundraising. “Andreessen, Bessemer, Sequoia
… they passed again and again.”
While Foley said that many investors expressed interest in owning a Peloton bike themselves, they were still hesitant to offer
financial backing of their own. The company’s plan was expensive and cumbersome: stationary, internet-connected bikes sold out of
branded retail outlets, along with an online offering of subscription fitness classes.
“Most investors would say, ‘Oh my gosh, the degree of difficulty is an 11 out of 10,'” said Foley. “They’d say, ‘So what if you do
all of this stuff and fail? You still don’t know the market for this product.'” …
https://declarenews.com/the-inside-story-of-peloton-a-fitness-media-company-that-was-turned-down-by-over-400-investors-but-is-now-worth-4-billion/
Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan will lead the IPO, according to Bloomberg, which reported that the deal could value the company at more than $8 billion.
Founded in 2012, Peloton sells high-end exercise bikes and treadmills, as well as subscriptions to content that streams on the machines, and separate digital exercise classes. The basic Peloton bike costs $2,245, and a Peloton treadmill costs $4,295.
Peloton was last valued at $4.15 billion in a 2018 funding round led by Technology Crossover Ventures, according to PitchBook. It's backed by others including Wellington Management, Fidelity Investments and Kleiner Perkins.
Since it sells consumer goods, Peloton could be considered a retail company, but it's expected to price on the public markets at similar multiples to other technology companies, one person familiar with the company said.
Peloton did not respond to a request for comment.
https://www.businessinsider.com/peloton-has-reportedly-picked-banks-for-an-ipo-which-could-value-it-at-more-than-8-billion-2019-2
The inside story of Peloton, a fitness media company that was turned down by over 400 investors but is now worth $4 billion (2018)
Peloton CEO John Foley estimates that his company was rejected between 5,000 to 6,000 times by 400+ investors.
When John Foley first pitched his idea for a fitness startup called Peloton to venture firms along the storied, four-lane
stretch of Sand Hill Road six years ago, investors were wary.
“Every round, for six rounds,” Foley said, recalling Peloton’s first three years of fundraising. “Andreessen, Bessemer, Sequoia
… they passed again and again.”
While Foley said that many investors expressed interest in owning a Peloton bike themselves, they were still hesitant to offer
financial backing of their own. The company’s plan was expensive and cumbersome: stationary, internet-connected bikes sold out of
branded retail outlets, along with an online offering of subscription fitness classes.
“Most investors would say, ‘Oh my gosh, the degree of difficulty is an 11 out of 10,'” said Foley. “They’d say, ‘So what if you do
all of this stuff and fail? You still don’t know the market for this product.'” …
https://declarenews.com/the-inside-story-of-peloton-a-fitness-media-company-that-was-turned-down-by-over-400-investors-but-is-now-worth-4-billion/
The big picture: Meet the minotaurs — our term for the companies that would be worth more than $1 billion even if the only thing they did was to take the cash that they have raised and put it in a checking account.
•A billion-dollar valuation is easy if you've raised more than a billion dollars.
•Axios has found 56 minotaurs as of early 2019. That's more than the 39 unicorns found by venture capitalist Aileen Lee when she invented the concept just over 5 years ago. (There are well over 300 unicorns today.)
•The first minotaur was Alibaba, in 2005. The first American minotaur was Facebook, in 2011, followed within a month by Groupon and Zynga.
•24 new minotaurs were created in 2018, a huge jump from 14 in 2017 and just 9 in 2016.
The rise of the minotaur reflects a new form of investing, epitomized by Japan's SoftBank, and a new form of company-building, dubbed "blitzscaling" by entrepreneurs Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh.
The big idea: If you have enough money, your investments can become self-fulfilling prophecies. The trick is to find a really big market with winner-takes-all economics. Then, spend an unholy amount of money on growing as fast as you can, and no one else will be able to touch you.
•If you're a startup taking a meeting with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, you know that he comes bearing both a carrot and a stick.
•The carrot is that he can invest hundreds of millions of dollars in your company, or even billions of dollars, to turbocharge your growth and help you crush your competition. The stick is that if he doesn't, that money will go to your competitor, and you will be the company getting crushed.
Blitzscaling isn't designed to be healthy for the economy. It's a deliberate attempt to build a monopoly that can't be competed against unless you have pockets that are billions of dollars deep.
•It's the promise of monopoly rents in the future that makes billion-dollar investments attractive in the present.
•The other side: You don't need to raise billions of dollars in order to scale into a monopoly. As Tim O'Reilly points out in a recent critique of blitzscaling, Google raised only $36 million before its IPO. Even Amazon raised only $108 million in venture capital before it went public.
#Minotaurs #Unicorns #Startups #Economics #Investing