Image Credit: Mike Butcher, taken at Bebo office, San Francisco in Apr 2008
The Tour
In April 2008, 20 of the hottest UK techstartups toured San Francisco and the Silicon Valley. These companies have raised a whopping $95 million to date. The Companies were:
- DotHomes/Byteplay,
- edocr.com
- Groupspaces
- HubDub/Fanduel
- Huddle
- Kwiqq
- Mydeo
- Rummble/Rummble Labs
- ShortFuze/Moviestorm
- Silobreaker
- Skimbit/Skimlinks
- SliceThePie
- TheFilter
- Trampoline Systems
- TrustedPlaces
- WAYN
- Webjam
- Zebtab
- Zogix
Current Status
3 have ceased operations (Kwiqq, Zebtab and Zogix). 2 have exited (Trusted Places and DotHomes). 2 have succeeded with major pivots (Skimlinks and Hubdub). 14 are continuing as before.
Funding Status
No funding data exist publicly for Silobreaker and mydeo. edocr.com has never raised funding. Top 5 in terms of most investment raised:
- Huddle: $38.2 million
- WAYN: $11 million
- TheFilter: $9.7 million
- Trampoline Systems: $7.67 million
- Skimbit/Skimlinks: $7.02 million
Alexa Ranking
Here is a vanity metric for those who love stats. WAYN with $11 million funding, is way ahead leading the pack. Second is Skimlinks, having pivoted and raised $7 million of funding. edocr.com is just behind 3rd placed Silobreaker. Huddle, who raised $38.2 million is in 6th place behind Fanduel. Of course, not every product has the same URL as the website. In edocr.com’s case, the website is the product!
You cannot value a company simply based on Alexa ranking. Would be interesting to review where everyone would be by end of 2012.
Revenues
After raising $95 million, I bet you love to know details of revenues generated by these companies? Here goes:
- Huddle: £1.5 million with 52 staff (2011) – Note that the last round of investment was raised after 2011 financial year end, and it will take few years to turn investment into revenues.
Founder(s) Equity Ownership
I only had time for a quick look at ownership. Its interesting to see most of the top companies have retained a sizeable chunk of equity by founders. I’m not sure whether everyone will be too happy for me to share this information publicly, even though the information is very much public.