Tech

The 10 Most Successful Y Combinator Startups

By Alyson Shontell
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airbnb founders brian chesky joe gebbia
The Airbnb founders launched the company at Y Combinator.  Airbnb

Y Combinator Demo Day is today.

Y Combinator is a startup accelerator program that helps young companies get off the ground. Since it was founded in 2005, Y Combinator has put hundreds of startups through its program.

Some of the startups never made it. Others have become billion-dollar companies or been acquired for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Reddit was acquired by Conde Nast in 2006 for an undisclosed amount

reddit team

Founders: Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman

What it is: Social news site that shows articles chose and voted for by readers

Omnisio was acquired by Google/YouTube in 2008 for ~ $15 million

omnisio

Founders: Ryan Junee, Simon Ratner and Julian Frumar

What it is: Lets people annotate and share videos from any website.

280 North was acquired by Motorola Mobility in 2010 for $20 million

280 North
Ross Boucher co-founded 280 North

Founders: Ross Boucher, Francisco Tolmasky and Tom Robinson

What it is: An easy way to develop rich web applications

Zenter was acquired by Google in 2010 for $25 million

robby walker zenter
Robby Walker co-founded Zenter.

Founders: Robby Walker and Wayne Crosby

What it is: A web presentation application

Wufoo was acquired by SurveyMonkey in 2011 for $35 million in cash and stock

Wufoo
The Wufoo team

Founders: Chris Campbell, Kevin Hale and Ryan Campbell

What it is: Helps users build online forms.

Cloudkick was acquired by Rackspace in 2010 for a reported $50 million

cloudkick

Founders: Alex Polvi, Dan Di Spaltro, Logan Welliver

What it is: Cloud server monitoring and management tools

OMGPOP was acquired by Zynga last week for ~ $210 million

charles forman omgpop
Flickr / @MSG

Founders: Dan Albritton and Charles Forman (I'mInLikeWithYou.com)

What it is: Social gaming company

Heroku was acquired by Salesforce in 2010 for $212 million

Adam Wiggins Heroku
Adam Wiggins founded Heroku

Founders: Adam Wiggins, James Lindenbaum, Byron Sebastian (CEO)

What it is: Develop and deploy apps in the cloud

Airbnb raised $112 million at a $1 billion valuation last summer

lin-airbnb

Founders: Nathan Blecharczyk, Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia

What it is: Short term peer to peer apartment rentals

Dropbox raised $250 million at a $4 billion valuation in October

drew-houston-dropbox
Flickr / Financial Times Photos

Founders: Drew Houston, Arash Ferdowsi

What it is: File storage and sharing company

For more startups on the rise, check out:

lily liu publicstuff
Lily Lui founded PublicStuff, a help line in the cloud.

The 25 Hot New York City Startups You Need To Watch >

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Alyson Shontell Business Insider
Alyson Shontell
Alyson is the Editor-in-Chief and CCO at Fortune.  She was previously a co Editor-in-Chief overseeing Business Insider's tech and business coverage.She joined Business Insider in July 2008 as the company's sixth employee. She started as a sales planner before joining the editorial team in 2010, where she became a startup reporter and was first to cover some of today's largest tech companies, including Pinterest, Tinder, Instagram, Uber and Snap. Alyson rose to become a senior correspondent, then Executive Editor.She was appointed Editor-in-Chief of Business Insider in 2016, at which point she became the youngest and only woman to run a global business publication. Under her leadership, the business division has grown to hundreds of  millions of monthly readers.Alyson was a host of  Insider's conferences and launched a podcast, "Success! How I Did It," where she interviewed influencers ranging from Sheryl Sandberg to Steve Ballmer about their career paths (subscribe on iTunes here).She has appeared on ABC, Good Morning America, Al Jazeera, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, and CBC, and she has interviewed media personalities such as Megyn Kelly, technology leaders like Fred Wilson, political leaders like John Brennan, and sports star LeBron James. She is a judge for the prestigious Gerald Loeb Awards in business journalism, and has been named one of Min's Rising Stars in Media, as well as Folio's 2017 Top Women in Media.She graduated from Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communications, where she majored in psychology and advertising.You can read some of her investigative articles here:— Leaked videos reveal the true founding story of Snapchat— The founder who dumped Jared Kushner: Inside the phone call that left the White House star in a fit of rage— The downfall of billion-dollar startup, Fab— How a startup that raised the largest seed round in Silicon Valley history blew itself up before it even launched— The dark side of Facebook, where people lie, cheat, and make millions— A profile of Uber's controversial CEO, Travis Kalanick— The mystery of Jody Sherman, a founder who was driven to suicide and left behind a shocking business disasterDisclosure: Alyson owns bitcoin and Snap. She is also an investor in The Spun, a sports-media startup founded by her husband.
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