These Startup ‘Success Stories’ Had Plenty of Help

If you see a business out in the wild that has one horn and is valued at over $1 billion dollars (even if it doesn’t exactly have $1 billion to spend), that’s a unicorn. Companies including AirBnB, Epic Games, and Robinhood all qualify.

It turns out some of the most valued tech unicorns today, worth multi-billions, had some big help at the start. That’s because venture capitalists believed in them enough to provide initial funding to those companies, all launched since 2010, which translated to a huge influx of cash before they even got off the ground. You can see the top five up above, but here’s the top ten list, as compiled by Business.CenturyLink.com in their report (entitled Startups with a Leg up: 10 Successful Startups with the Most Initial Funding).

(Source: Business.CenturyLink.com)

Some of those are household names today, such as Instagram, Instacart, Lyft, and DoorDash. ByteDance, at the top, is the Chinese company behind TikTok. The list also includes the mediation app Calm (the one with a $ 399-lifetime subscription!) and the collaborative design app Canva.

What’s interesting to see is the dollar increase from that initial funding to where they stand today. Food deliverer DoorDash grew the most from the least amount of initial investment, from $120,000 to $71 billion in value. That’s a venture capitalist’s dream. Chime, the online/mobile bank, is at number two. TikTok’s ByteDance, however, had the highest initial investment—in the billions—which means it had the least gain: “only” 3,000% since 2012.