#USA Sick of managing your Airbnb? Vacasa raises $64M to do it for you

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Airbnbing can be a ton of work. Between key pickups, tidying, and maintenance emergencies, renting out your place isn’t such a passive revenue source. But Vacasa equips owners with full-service vacation home management, including listings on top rental platforms like Airbnb and HomeAway, as well as local cleaners who come between guests. It now manages 10,000 vacation rental properties in over 16 countries.

With the peer-to-peer housing market maturing and Airbnb looking to go public, private equity firms see an opportunity in who controls the end relationship with home owners like Vacasa does. So today the startup is announcing it’s raised $64 million in a Series B bridge round led by Riverwood, and joined by Level Equity, Assurant, and Newspring. The cash will fuel Vacasa’s expansion into real estate as it seeks to sell property to people who want to own and rent out a vacation home.

Vacasa was impressively bootstrapped from 2009 until 2015. “I’ve always been passionate about vacation rentals. When traveling with friends or family, I love having common spaces to come together in” says CEO Eric Breon. He founded the company after owning a vacation cabin on the Washington Coast. He’d go up in the Spring, spend a weekend fixing up the place, it’d sit idle all summer, and then he’d have to spend another weekend closing it up. He considered a local property manager, but they massively underestimated how much he could earn off renting it out. So Breon built Vacasa to make it easy for home owners to earn the most money without a hassle.

After years growing the business organically, Vacasa raised a $35 million series A from Level Equity in 2015, then $5 million more from Assurant. Then in fall of 2017, it raised an $103.5 million series B. Now it’s topping up that round with $64 million and a new valuation warranted by the startup’s growth this past year. That brings Vacasa to a total of $207.5 million in funding

While that’s just a fraction of the over $4.4 billion Airbnb has raised. But Vacasa caters to a more upscale market that don’t want to manage the properties themselves. With plenty of popular listings sites out there, Vacasa gets easy distribution. But eventually as the other giants in the space become public companies, they’ll be forced to chase bigger margins that could see them compete with Vacasa after years of partnership.

Breon remains confident, though. When I ask him the biggest existential threat to the business, he declares that “We’ve reached a point where failure isn’t a realistic outcome. We have great retention of our homeowners, and strong recurring revenue. The question is more about how quickly we can continue scaling into the huge $32 billion market we’re focused on.” Getting to an exit might not be quite so straightforward, but with life seeming to get more stressful by the year, there’ll be no shortage of people seeking a getaway.

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#USA Arianna Huffington’s Thrive Global is teaming up with Zenefits

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Many are familiar with Arianna Huffington’s personal journey from media mogul to outspoken sleep advocate.

In April 2007 she collapsed, broke her collarbone and woke up in a pool of blood, a well-publicized accident she attributes to sleep deprivation and exhaustion. In the years that followed, she shifted her focus to wellness, authoring two books on the topic: Thrive and The Sleep Revolutionand later founded a wellness media company called Thrive Global.

Thrive, which bills itself as a “behavior change” startup, helps businesses help their employees develop healthy relationships with technology and manage stress and burnout — issues with which Huffington is personally familiar. The company has raised nearly $43 million in venture capital funding to date, at a $121.5 million valuation as of May.

Today, Thrive is announcing a new partnership with Zenefits, the provider of software that helps small- and medium-sized business (SMBs) manage human resources, though is still often known for a series of regulatory and compliance issues that led to the exit of its founding chief executive, Parker Conrad.

The partnership will make available to employees of the 11,000 businesses that use Zenefits human resources software Thrive content, tips and tools within the Zenefits platform, and managers will be able to use the Thrive app to track and measure employee well-being.

“People are sleep deprived; people are eating the wrong food,” Huffington told TechCrunch. “It’s very basic things we can change through behavior that affect the bottom line of a company.”

“When you give employees science-based micro steps — that’s how change happens,” she added. “You need little nudges to help you change your behavior.”

Thrive educational content focuses on sleep, humans’ relationship with technology, goal setting and other issues that pertain to physical and mental health.

Huffington and Jay Fulcher, Zenefits CEO, told TechCrunch this arrangement was a year in the making.

Zenefits tapped Fulcher, the former CEO of Ooyala and Agile Software, as CEO last year. He was the third CEO in the span of 12 months after Conrad was ousted and Craft Ventures’ David Sacks stepped down after a brief stint as interim CEO. 

“{Stress] is the tipping point for things like retention, which obviously costs businesses billions and billions every year,” Fulcher said. “We have a very sophisticated and broad tech platform and to be able to put all of Thrive’s content on our platform, we think that is a really good proposition and one that customers are excited about.”

Thrive has historically worked with large enterprises, inking deals with Accenture, J.P. Morgan and others since Huffington launched the company in 2016. A partnership with Zenefits marks its first foray into SMBs. 

Thrive is backed by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Sean Parker, Lerer Hippeau, Greycroft Partners and others. Zenefits, founded in 2013, is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity, TPG and others. Both companies are backed by IVP.

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#USA Emma, the money management app, rolls out cryptocurrency support

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Emma, the U.K. money management app (or self-described “financial advocate”), is launching a cryptocurrency feature by integrating with a plethora of exchanges so that you can easily track your cryptocurrency balances. The idea is that a modern PFM type app should support cryptocurrency if it wants to provide insights into a user’s whole financial life, not just fiat currency sitting in traditional banks or on credit cards.

At launch, the supported cryptocurrency exchanges are Coinbase, Bittrex, Binance, Bitstamp, Kraken, Bitfinex and individual Bitcoin and Ethereum addresses. However, for now the functionality is “read-only,” meaning you can’t make transactions within Emma or buy more cryptocurrency. For that, you’ll still need to visit the individual exchanges, at least for the time being.

“We see cryptocurrency as the next emerging asset class,” Emma co-founder and CEO Edoardo Moreni tells me. “At this point, there are more than 3 million people who have bought Crypto in the U.K. It’s pretty evident that we need to start accepting this as any other type of financial product, in the same way we treat current accounts and credit cards. If Emma is able to help people control and manage a current account, she should be able to do the same for any type of financial product or service”.

On the issue of read-only access, Moreni explains that Emma’s founding goal has always been to build the best financial tracker in the market, hence why the startup hasn’t yet developed any “write-access” features for any of the bank accounts it connects to (or the newly added cryptocurrency exchanges). However, now that Emma’s read only mission is “solid and almost complete,” this will soon change.

“We are going to release several write features in both spaces, traditional and crypto,” says Moreni. “Open Banking will be extremely useful for the former. In terms of the latter, we are already talking with a few providers to introduce write transactions and also the ability to save in cryptocurrency, based on behavioural rules and risk appetite. We see this as a huge opportunity and if we are those who help people understand and invest in crypto for the first time, it fits with our core mission”.

That mission, says the Emma founder, isn’t just to design a really useful aggregator, but to use the aggregated data to help Emma users better manage their money and in the longer term improve their financial well-being.

“We see aggregation as the internet 25 years ago,” he says, “a massive playground which we can use to build technology that has an impact on people’s lives. Our main focus is financial improvement. There is no technology out there that helps you getting out of an overdraft, teaches where and how to save or makes you invest for the first time. We believe this is what Emma is all about.

“We are not trying to be the default interface for a generation or the mission control centre of our finances. We want to build a technology that helps people improve. At the end of the day, that is where the real value is and this is what we are pursuing. This is not and will never be the job of banks, whose goal is to build great financial products, which Emma can interact with”.

To that end, Emma’s list of current features includes:

  • Manage all your money in one place (current & savings accounts, credit cards and now crypto)
  • Sync budgets to payday (“this is the most requested feature in the U.K.,” says Moreni)
  • Find and track recurring payments – as well as predicting future payments and notifying when prices go up and down
  • Notify you before you go into overdraft
  • Detect hidden bank fees, such as markup on foreign transactions
  • Spending insights broken down by category or vendor
  • Smart alerts for various transactions
  • Real time currency converter

Meanwhile, Emma raised a seed round of £500,000 in July 2018 led by Kima Ventures, one of the first investors in Transferwise, and Aglaé Ventures, the early stage program of Groupe Arnault.

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#USA Cryptocurrency wallet startup Cobo raises $13M Series A to enter the U.S. and Southeast Asia

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Cobo, a cryptocurrency wallet startup headquartered in Beijing, has raised a $13 million Series A to enter new international markets. The round was led by DHVC and Wu Capital, a family office based in China. Cobo plans to expand in the United States and Southeast Asia, in particular Vietnam and Indonesia. Cobo is also now taking pre-orders for Cobo Vault, a hardware wallet (pictured above) that it claims is military grade. Cobo’s Series A brings its total funding to $20 million so far.

Cobo Wallet allows users to store both proof-of-stake and proof-of-work coins. One incentive for people to pick the app over its competitors is the ability to pool proof-of-stake assets with other users so they can increase their chances of mining and validating new blocks on the blockchain. Since launching earlier this year, Cobo says its digital wallet has gained more than 500,000 users.

The startup was founded last year by CEO Shixing Mao, who is known as Discus Fish in the crypto community, and CTO Changhao Jiang, a former platform engineer at Facebook and Google who co-founded Bihang, a cryptocurrency wallet acquired by OKCoin in 2013. Discus Fish, meanwhile, is known for launching F2Pool, China’s first mining pool.

Cobo Vault, which will retail for $479, meets the MIL-STD-810G U.S. military standard for equipment, Cobo’s head of hardware Lixin Liu said in an email, adding that it was built with proprietary firmware created especially for the device, a bank-grade encryption chip and military-grade aluminum.

Cobo Vault’s creation was prompted by an August 2017 incident in which F2Pool was hacked and more than 8,000 ETH was stolen from Discus Fish’s account. Fish also refunded customers’ lost ETH from his own assets. “As a result, Discus Fish was resolute on the fact that for crypto to gain mass market adoption, products had to be made to be hacker-resistant and truly safe,” said Liu.

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#USA YC grad Oh My Green gets $20M seed investment

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In its first institutional funding round, Oh My Green has raised $20 million from Initialized Capital, Powerplant Ventures, Backed VC, ZhenFund, Talis Capital and the Stanford StartX Fund to bring healthier foods to offices around the U.S.

The concierge-style startup, which completed Y Combinator’s startup accelerator in 2016, provides businesses in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, Austin, Denver, Boston, New York City and Nashville nutritional snacks and meals. It stocks office snack pantries — a staple at tech startups — caters events, manages cafes and provides wellness programming. Its goal is to be a one-stop shop for corporate nutritional wellness. 

The San Francisco-based company was founded in 2014 by Michael Heinrich. Based off my conversation with him earlier this week, I’m guessing he wouldn’t approve of the TechCrunch snack cupboard, which includes a year-long supply of Skittles, M&Ms and Fruit by the Foot.

“I wanted to do something more meaningful in my life,” Heinrich told TechCrunch. “I had worked in really challenging environments and I found myself really enjoying the people and the problems but looking at the food we had available, a lot of it was ultra-processed and ultra-sugared.”

“When I was sugar crashing and not being productive at work, I realized I should stop complaining and actually make a difference,” he added.

Oh My Green’s tech-enabled service, which relies on machine learning to give its customers personalized recommendations for meals and snacks, has 200 customers today, including Lyft, Apple and Y Combinator. With the investment, the company will expand throughout the U.S. and eventually launch overseas.

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#USA New York on Tech is helping under-resourced students become future tech leaders

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Image: Getty Images/smartboy10/DigitalVision

Jessica Santana and Evin Robinson were riding the subway home from a college leadership conference when they realized they were getting off at the same stop.  It turned out, they had grown up in the same neighborhood, no more than 5 blocks apart.

Years later, both Santana and Robinson were working six-figure jobs in the tech practices of elite corporations but were disheartened by the homogeneity of their surroundings.

The tech industry is the primary generator of new jobs in the US, but the inaccessibility of resources and practical education left students in neighborhoods like Jessica and Evin’s unprepared and unqualified in the eyes of recruiters.

So the pair met at a local Starbucks and on the back of a napkin, they outlined what would become New York on Tech (NYOT).

By offering comprehensive computational courses and a broad professional network, NYOT hopes to provide under-resourced students in New York City with the skills and infrastructure needed for a successful career in tech.

Real skills have led to real results

What began as a passion project with just 20 students has blossomed into an organization helping more than 1000 students across the city.

Unlike the higher-level computer science classes Santana and Robinson saw offered in schools, NYOT aims to focus on more functional skills that are applicable to the day-to-day work of tech professionals.

The program caters its curriculums specifically towards areas it believes are in high demand from today’s hiring managers, including front-end and back-end web development, mobile development and UX design.

Classes are located at the offices of corporate partners, where students get direct mentorship from engineers and observe how technical skills are actually implemented in various roles

Graduates of NYOT are then given the opportunity to interview for internships at each partner organization, where they can gain practical experience and bolster resumes to be more competitive for future recruiting.

The organization points to successes both inside and outside the classroom, noting 100% of graduates in 2016 received admission into four-year colleges, many with scholarships to top engineering programs.

NYOT students have also landed paid internships and jobs with major companies that include Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, and others.  And while the organization admits corporate partners were initially hard to come by, NYOT’s partnership roster now includes some of the most influential names in tech and business, such as Google, NBCUniversal and FactSet.

To date, NYOT has been built largely without city government sponsorship, funded mainly by corporate partnerships, schools, and philanthropic donations.

The company offers its programs for free and partners with schools in high poverty areas of New York City where 50% of students or more are eligible for free lunch.

But NYOT thinks of itself not just as a non-profit providing educational training but as a deep-impact talent accelerator, supplying already capable students with the key resources they lack.

“People automatically think these students are disconnected youth because we say low income and people of color.  They think they’re uninterested in the technology industry”, said the founders.  “That is not true.  They come from areas that are low income or under-resourced but the population of students we work with is super smart, driven, hungry, and motivated.”

Offering more to more people

Going forward, the company plans to add curriculums that it believes fit the future needs of employers, including classes centered on cyber security, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

On top of serving more students in the New York metropolitan area, Santana and Robinson hope they can bring what they’ve done in New York to a national scale and expand to communities across the country. 

However, the founders emphasize that they will focus on slow effective scaling, crafting curriculums specific to each locality.  “The work we do is really embedded in community.  We’re not designing for that community but designing with it”, said Robinson.

Santana and Robinson’s broader goal is bigger than “diversity” and inclusion.”

“In the industry, we use words like diversity and inclusion.  While we and our work value diversity and inclusion, this is about economic justice”, said Santana. 

“Think about job automation and job displacement.  If our students aren’t getting the most critical training, how can we expect them to compete for the jobs of today and tomorrow?  This is not just about diversity or inclusion, it is about positioning our country’s talent strategy.”

NYOT is now seeing extremely high demand for slots in its programs.  With more qualified applicants than they can actually accept, Santana and Robinson hope to bring on more volunteers to help them break down the barriers of access for as many kids as they can.

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#USA Health insurance startup Alan covers meditation app subscription

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French startup Alan wants to be a bit better than your good old health insurance. That’s why the company is trying something new and now covers part of your Petit Bambou subscription.

Petit Bambou is a popular meditation app. It’s a sort of Headspace, but with French content. You download an app, put your earphones, close your eyes and follow the instructions. Meditating ten or twenty minutes every day should help you feel better after a while.

The basic course is free and you need to pay a subscription to access more content. It costs €7 per month or €60 per year.

In France, health insurance companies usually cover your bills when the national healthcare system already pays for part of the bill.

For instance, if you get X-Rays for your arm, the national healthcare system will pay for part of the bill, and your health insurance will cover the rest. Usually, if something is not covered by the national healthcare system, your insurance company won’t cover it either.

But Alan wants to differentiate its offering and add more stuff. The Petit Bambou offering is just a test for now. You can get €25 back if you subscribe for six months or a year. It only works once. But Alan is thinking about turning it into a recurring offer if people like the feature.

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#USA N26 faces criticism regarding its identification processes

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Fintech startup N26 is growing quite rapidly. Building a startup is hard, but building a startup that manages your bank account is even harder given the increased scrutiny. German weekly magazine Wirtschaftswoche published an article that questioned N26’s identification processes. According to Wirtschaftswoche, it’s quite easy to create an account with a fake ID document.

“One or two people got through with a fake ID document. And we detected that afterward. Unfortunately, we didn't detect it in real time,” co-founder and CEO Valentin Stalf told me. “Unfortunately, it can happen.”

But Stalf also insisted that it’s not a widespread problem and that all banks face the same issue. According to him, N26 complies with all regulations when it comes to onboarding.

Currently, N26 has three different procedures depending on the country and works with a third-party company called SafeNed for some of the verification procedures.

In many countries, you can initiate a video call with someone so that they can check your ID and compare it with your face. In Germany, you can also print a document, go to the post office with an ID document and make a post employee check that you are actually you.

In some countries, you can open an N26 account by uploading a photo of your ID document and a selfie. Other banks also take advantage of this procedure. For instance, it’s a common process in the U.K.

More generally, other banks also have to deal with fake ID documents. But security is never perfect. That’s why you can’t simply eradicate the issue. You can try to keep the fake ID rate as low as possible.

“Security is our top priority at N26, which is why secure identification processes and constant review of our security and monitoring mechanisms to prevent identity theft are of great importance to the company,” the company told me in a statement.

In other words, N26 monitors this fake ID rate. And N26 also has ongoing transaction monitoring for those who have already opened a bank account. The company tries to detect fraudulent activity as quickly as possible.

You might think that uploading a photo of your ID document leads to more fraudulent activity. But N26 has noticed that there’s a higher fraud rate for customers who go to the post office to check their ID document.

So fraud is nothing new in the banking industry. Nobody has eradicated fraud, and nobody will. In fact, many startups (such as DreamQuark) are working on improving fraud detection using machine learning and more sophisticated processes. But even artificial intelligence won’t solve this problem altogether.

All eyes are on N26 because it’s the hot new thing. But if you look at what’s happening, it’s a pretty boring story. “In one of the articles they said we used weaker method to grow faster. This is complete bullshit,” Stalf told me.

This story is a great example that it can be tough to manage your startup’s reputation. Building trust takes a long time. But it can go away much more quickly. That might be why N26 debunked the issue so intensely.

Here’s N26’s full statement:

Security is our top priority at N26, which is why secure identification processes and constant review of our security and monitoring mechanisms to prevent identity theft are of great importance to the company.

After the customer’s identity is verified, we carry out ongoing transaction monitoring along with numerous other security measures, in a bid to prevent criminal activity such as money laundering and terrorist financing.

We therefore take the findings put forward by Wirtschaftswoche very seriously, will analyse the facts and take appropriate measures if necessary.

Contrary to the statement in Wirtschaftswoche, the use of photo verification by N26 is legally compliant. N26 works with a regulated payment service provider, SafeNed, in this regard. SafeNed is a UK business which is authorised and regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) with regards to the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing. SafeNed verifies its customers using the Photo Ident process, which is compliant with UK law.

According to the German Money Laundering Act, N26 is allowed to use a third party regulated in the EU, in this case a payment service provider in the UK, for the verification of customers (Section 17 (1) GwG). The respective verification procedure is then determined by the law applicable to the third party (in the above example, therefore, by UK law). This understanding is also confirmed by BaFin in its interpretation and application notes on the German Money Laundering Act (p. 67 et seq.) for customers not resident in Germany.

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#USA Crypto Quantique unveils its ‘quantum driven secure chip’ for IoT devices

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With Gartner estimating that there will be 150 billion connected devices by 2030 — many of them mission critical, such as powering major national infrastructure — the risk and realisation that these devices aren’t secured properly is leading some cyber security experts to predict that there is a large-scale disaster waiting to happen. And the problem is only getting worse. By some estimates, on average there are 127 new devices connected to the internet every second.

Enter: Crypto Quantique, a startup out of company builder Entrepreneur First that has been patiently toiling away for the last couple of years trying to solve the IoT security problem. Specifically, the company has developed what it claims is “the world’s first quantum driven secure chip (QDSC)” on silicon, which, when combined with cryptographic APIs, it says is capable of providing any connected device with a scalable and easy to implement “end-to-end” security solution.

Moreover, by employing advanced techniques in cryptography and quantum physics, its makers say the Crypto Quantique QDSC is unique to every device and entirely unclonable, which makes it almost impossible to hack. That’s quite a claim.

“There are security complexities in IoT, many stakeholders, including OEMs, manufacturers, integrators and designers are involved in developing and implementing the IoT,” Shahram Mossayebi, co-founder of Crypto Quantique, told me over email. “Each stakeholder is faced with different threat vectors and thus has different security requirements and produces devices based on very different architectures. Currently there is no clear approach to securing the IoT, which is also impacted by the lack of basic security tools that would allow stakeholders to build their own security solutions”.

To that end, he explained that security must start from the device, then travel through the network and finally reach the IoT device’s backend services. In other words, proper end-to-end security is required to protect IoT devices and infrastructure.

At the heart of this is “root of trust” — the ability for a device to authenticate itself and be a trusted member of a network — which, conversely, is also the weakest link. Data traveling throughout the network also needs strong encryption, of course. Finally, with IoT devices being in the billions, there’s an issue of cost: any secure solution can’t be prohibitively expensive to implement on a per device basis or be fragmented across multiple third-party providers.

“We have created a root-of-trust by harnessing quantum processes in semiconductors to generate unique, unclonable and tamper evident cryptographic keys,” says Mossayebi. “We call it quantum driven secure chip (QDSC) and it is the first ever of its kind in the world. Because of the uniqueness and way in which the keys are generated there is no requirement to store the keys on the device because the keys can be retrieved on demand. This eliminates secure storage requirements and leakage of sensitive information.

“In addition to building the QDSC, we also provide the cryptographic APIs and manage the end to end security to remove the multiple parties involved in the security chain and provide an all-in-one solution. This means there are no ‘open windows’ in connectivity when it comes to security. Once a QDSC is placed in a device it links directly to the owner system (i.e. public or private cloud) through CQ’s cryptographic APIs, where it is managed automatically and remotely while the device is in the field. This is the most advanced security product for the IoT, enabling new industrial revolutions such as Industry 4.0”.

As I said, big (and very interesting) claims, indeed.

On that note, Mossayebi says Crypto Quantique is aimed at any connected device that needs to stay secure, from traffic lights to a SCADA machine used in critical infrastructure. “Currently, we are working with leaders in different fields such as defence, aerospace, energy, industrial IoT manufacturers and enterprise hardware appliance manufacturers. The applications vary from securing satellites and drones to securing energy grids, sensors in critical infrastructure and data centres,” he says.

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#USA These are the most successful companies to emerge from Y Combinator

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Earlier this month, Brex, a credit card provider to startups, announced it had raised $125 million at a $1.1 billion valuation.

The round was impressive for a couple of reasons. 1. The founders are a pair of 22-year-olds that had set out to build a virtual reality company before pivoting to payments. And 2. They had only completed Y Combinator, a well-known Silicon Valley startup accelerator, the year prior.

Y Combinator is responsible for many successes in the startup world, certainly more than its fellow accelerators, which are all known to provide early-stage companies with a seed investment  — in YC’s case, $150,000 — mentorship and educational resources through a short-term program that culminates in a demo day.

Today, YC has released the latest list of its most successful companies since it began backing startups in 2005. Ranked by valuation and/or market cap, Brex, sure enough, is the youngest company to crack the top 20:

  1. Airbnb: An online travel community and room-sharing platform founded by Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk. Valuation: $31 billion. YC W2009.
  2. Stripe: A provider of an online payment processing system for internet businesses founded by John and Patrick Collison. Valuation: $20 billion. YC S2009.
  3. Cruise: Acquired by GM in 2006, the company is building autonomous vehicles. It was founded by Kyle Vogt and Daniel Kan. Valuation: $14 billion. YC W2014.
  4. Dropbox: A file hosting service and workplace collaboration platform founded by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi that went public in March. Market cap: >$10 billion. YC S2007.
  5. Instacart: A grocery and home essentials delivery service founded by Apoorva Mehta, Max Mullen and Brandon Leonardo. Valuation: $7.6 billion. YC S2012.
  6. Machine Zone: A mobile games company, founded by Mike Sherril, Gabriel Leydon and Halbert Nakagawa, known for “Game of War.” Valuation: >$5 billion. YC W2008.
  7. DoorDash: An app-based food delivery service founded by Tony Xu, Stanley Tang and Andy Fang. Valuation: $4 billion. YC S2013.
  8. Zenefits: The provider of human resources software for small and medium-sized businesses founded by Laks Srini and Parker Conrad. Valuation: $2 billion. YC W2013.
  9. Gusto: The provider of software that automates and simplifies payroll for businesses, founded by Josh Reeves, Tomer London and Edward Kim. Valuation: $2 billion. YC W2012.
  10.  Reddit: An online platform for conversation and thousands of communities founded by Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman. Valuation: $1.8 billion. YC S2005.
  11.  Coinbase: An digital cryptocurrency exchange and wallet platform founded by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam. Valuation ~$1.6 billion. YC S2012.
  12.  PagerDuty: A digital ops management platform for businesses founded by Baskar Puvanathasan, Andrew Miklas and Alex Solomon. Valuation: $1.3 billion. YC S2012.
  13.  Docker: A platform for applications that gives developers the freedom to build, manage and secure business-critical applications, founded by Solomon Hykes and Sebastien Pahl. Valuation: $1.3 billion. YC S2010.
  14.  Ginkgo Bioworks: A biotech company focused on designing custom microbes founded by Reshma Shetty, Jason Kelly, Barry Canton and others. Valuation: >$1 billion. YC S2014.
  15.  Rappi: A Latin American on-demand delivery startup founded by Felipe Villamarin, Simon Borrero and Sebastian Mejia. Valuation: >$1 billion. YC W2016.
  16.  Brex: A B2B financial startup that provides corporate cards to startups. Its founders include Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi. Valuation: $1.1 billion. YC W2017.
  17.  GitLab: A developer service founded by Sid Sijbrandij and Dmitriy Zaporozhets, that aims to offer a full lifecycle DevOps platform. Valuation: $1.1 billion. YC W2015.
  18.  Twitch: An Amazon-acquired live streaming platform for video games used by millions. Its founders include Emmett Shear, Justin Kan, Michael Seibel and Kyle Vogt. YC W2007.
  19.  Flexport: A logistics company that moves freight globally by air, ocean, rail and truck founded by Ryan Petersen. Valuation: ~$1 billion. YC W2014.
  20.  Mixpanel: A user analytics platform that helps each person at a business understand its users founded by Suhail Doshi and Tim Trefren. Valuation: >$865 million. YC S2009.

The full list of Y Combinator’s 100 most successful companies is available here.

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