In a former life I served as Editor of Seattle 2.0, and one of the most popular pieces of content we produced was the Seattle 2.0 Index – a monthly ranked list of all the local startups. It was a labor of love by Marcelo Calbucci and I was never a part of making it, but I always loved seeing how my favorite companies were doing and discovering new ones. I always thought it would be fun to make something similar for Silicon Valley, but it turns out there are a lot more startups here (I know, I know). To test drive the idea I’m starting with the companies from Y Combinator who haven’t exited, and are still operating.
There are plenty of flaws with rankings like this because traffic and Facebook monthly active users hardly tell the full story of any company and it compares web to mobile, social to enterprise, and on and on. What is valuable is seeing how things change over time. This is the first index, so it doesn’t have the month over month comparison. What it does reveal is that some companies you might not hear about every day in the press are doing really well.
Important: This does not include companies in the current YC batch.
Take a look, let me know what you think, who I missed, or any other feedback. You can read about the methodology at the bottom of this post. I will update this with any corrections and leave an update note.
Methodology
The ranking is based on Alexa traffic rankings first, and Facebook monthly active users second. Right now it doesn’t factor in the iOS or Android rankings because the data is very limited. The MAU numbers are weighted as a percentage of the total MAU across all the companies, multiplied by ten, and subtracted from the Alexa rank. It sounds simplistic, but looking at the list it seems to make sense. I’m open to feedback on mkaing it better.
Have you seen seed-db? http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators/view?acceleratorid=1011
ATA ought to be on here.
This is great! We’ve been working on something similar at StartHQ to automatically generate a popularity score for B2B web apps.
Would you be OK with us adapting your method, with attribution of course? We would be able to calculate the scores automatically and update them daily.
Where is Leftronic?
Why isn’t reddit on this list?
I believe because reddit has exited (sale to Conde Nast years ago). Danielle’s list appears to not include any companies that are listed as either dead or having exited.
Epic, Danielle.
I’ve put the data into Silk so you can analyse the data: http://ycindex.silkapp.com/
Where’s spotted.de?
There is a typo at the final line. I think “mkaing it better.” should be “making it better”.
I wonder if Alexa can properly count all the Disqus traffic, since they’re embedded into so many disparate pages.
Interesting – I know you caveated it, but I think comparing iCracked (hardware company) to consumer facing web startup doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.. It would be much more interesting to use revenue, number of employees, etc.. I understand this information isn’t readily available, but just figured I would point this out in case you decided to do this for a larger segment of companies.. Otherwise nice work, very interesting!
I totally agree, what I’d like to do is split out the companies into respective segments. Right now I am thinking consumer, enterprise, developer, and hardware would make good sections. Any others you’d suggest?
Hi Danielle
Amazing list! You should check out SimilarWeb’s traffic rank for these sites on http://www.similarweb.com
More reliable than Alexa
Basing the ranking on Alexa traffic ranking and Facebook monthly active users is good, but, I think probably not comprehensive enough.
For example, industry specific websites like RentHop naturally would have lower traffic volume, compared to a generic service like DropBox.
So, to make them compete on an equal ground, I’d suggest that you add a 3rd ranking factor, which is Profitability.
Even though they are all VC backed companies and they don’t have any urgent need to generate net profit, but the sooner their business models are validated, the better.
I am not affiliated with RentHop in any fashion, but I heard they were immediately profitable after the first couple of months of existence.
I think VC backed startups should get as much eyeballs as possible first, but, figure out a solid monetization strategy is just as important, if not more.
Everyone still remembers Pets.com? They blew through millions of dollars of ad spend, and then went under right after that.