(2012-11-15) Billion Dollar Startups

There's a US$1B software Start Up (Unicorn) founded every 3 months!

• Nov'2012: but they may not want to do an IPO...
• interesting look at 472 companies that are $100M+. Out of every company valued at north of $100 million since 1998, roughly 50 are building a business off of advertising. That’s astoundingly low, and kicks the grab-eyeballs-and-figure-it-out-later ethos right in the teeth. 2012-11-25-NonConsumerWeb
• cf 2012-05-30-ChenConsumerInternetBusinessModelNotTheIssue
• Feb'2013 update: lots of them hitting that window: SquareUp, Spot Ify, AirBnb, Gilt Groupe, Vente Privee, EverNote, Drop Box, BoxNet, PInterest (?!), Survey Monkey, Twitter ($9B)...
• Oct'2013: DustinCurtis says: Monthly active users: LinkedIn: 160M, Twitter: 230M, Zynga: 232M, We Chat: 236M, WhatsApp: 300M, Google Chrome: 750M, Yahoo: 800M, FaceBook: 1,150M.