Today’s Booze: Top 5 Startups

Did the most successful startups have it right when they started? Today we are sharing with you five stories about the success of five big names that you probably all know but never thought of them as being startups.

“Chase the vision, not the money, the money will end up following you.” – Tony Hsieh, Zappos.

Better.com

Better.com is an online mortgage website that promises faster and cheaper home buying. It was launched in 2016 by Vishal Garg who back then was desperately trying to find his dream home. “The process to buy a home is so slow, siloed and intentionally complicated,” says Garg, who had previously launched four investment-driven startups prior to founding Better.com. “I realized that if this process is this bad for me as a relatively sophisticated consumer who works in consumer financials, then it must be impossible for others,” he told Forbes.

In 2018 Better.com earned $24 million in revenue, with a $600 million valuation following this funding round, according to the company. Four years later the company is still no.1 on many other top startups lists.

Glossier

To create a new beauty brand is a challenge nowadays. But Glossier obviously started the right way by implementing the so-known co-creation process into the whole concept of the brand. The three-year-old company specializes in beauty, skincare, and fragrance products. They recently raised $52 million in funding to improve its customer experience because “the main thing Glossier stands for is the power of the individual to choose their own style, to make connections with other people, to ask questions, to understand better the things that they may want. Glossier exists purely to serve what we hear from those people about what they want,” Glossier CEO concludes.

Unlike traditional beauty brands where products are developed first, after which the brands must figure out how to sell them, Glossier puts the specific consumer product need out front, thus simplifying the sales and marketing process. With some 1.5 million Instagram followers, Glossier has been named a top beauty brand by Allure, Teen Vogue, Glamour, Nylon, Women’s Wear Daily, and Cosmopolitan. It also won the WWD Beauty Inc. 2015 Digital Innovator of the Year award and was put on LinkedIn's Top Startups of the World list.

Uber

Just like any other successful business, Uber did not gain popularity overnight. However, one thing which made Uber become so popular was word-of-mouth advertising. The initial traction for Uber came from corporates and other high-class people but Uber soon realized that they had to target the masses and give options to customers. This led to various segments like Uber X, Uber Black, Uber SUV, and also made drivers partner with Uber. 

In 2014 Uber received $2 billion in investments which made its co-founder one of the richest people in the world. The company’s weekly revenue is about $20 million. Uber is the competitor of traditional taxi services, but they are very fond of customers. The service allows passengers to find free drivers on their own and pay for them online. The company’s capabilities are not limited to taxi services. Uber plans to enter other markets, for which the main role is played by thoughtful logistics – food delivery, courier transportation, postal services, etc.

Airbnb

Airbnb is a fast and convenient service by which tourists can rent accommodation directly from the owners, without contacting various agencies. This is a startup project that you probably know and you have used yourself when travelling abroad.

In 2014, the project attracted $500 million in funding, after which its value increased to $10 billion. The founders of the company, Brian Chesky, Nathan Blecharzik, and Joe Gebbia, immediately gained the status of billionaires.

Airbnb is considered the market leader in a co-consumption economy. The service includes 1.5 million properties in 190 countries. During the existence of the company, its services have been used by more than 11 million people.

Pinterest

Humans are eager collectors and are attracted to the idea of sentimentality and practicality in that collecting. So maybe people who created Pinterest understood that well and created the platform which is now one of the leading apps on the Google store. Pinterest’s CEO Ben Silbermann was coming from a family of doctors and got accepted into Yale University but soon realized that he didn’t want to have a career as a doctor. After a consulting gig in Washington DC, working for Google, and a failed app, he came up with another idea. In 2009, Ben and a college friend, Paul Sciarra, along with Evan Sharp, started working on a site on which people could show collections of things they were interested in, in an interactive pin-board format.

Ben personally wrote to the site’s first 7,000 users offering his personal phone number and even meeting with some of its users. Fun fact but the name of the website: it was invented on a Thanksgiving dinner by Ben’s girlfriend.

These are some of the most popular and successful startups in the world. Do you know any successful startups? We will be happy to discuss them with you. Share their stories in the comment section down below!

Cheers!

References:

Brier, E. (2019, August 19). Better.com, A Digital Mortgage Disruptor, Raises $160 Million In Latest Funding Round. Retrieved October 22, 2020, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/elisabethbrier/2019/08/19/bettercom-a-digital-mortgage-disruptor-raises-160m-in-latest-funding-round/

Danziger, P. (2018, November 07). 5 Reasons That Glossier Is So Successful. Retrieved October 22, 2020, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2018/11/07/5-keys-to-beauty-brand-glossiers-success/

The Inside Story of the 10 Most Successful Startups. (2020, August 04). Retrieved October 22, 2020, from https://arkenea.com/blog/how-successful-startups-started/

Miltimore, J. (2018, September 07). LinkedIn Reveals the Top 10 Startups of 2018: Jon Miltimore. Retrieved October 22, 2020, from https://fee.org/articles/linkedin-reveals-the-top-10-startups-of-2018/

Top 10 Most Successful Startups. (n.d.). Retrieved October 22, 2020, from https://www.safestartup.org/links.htm

Top 10 Most Successful Startups. (n.d.). Retrieved October 22, 2020, from https://www.safestartup.org/links.htm

Uber Business Model Canvas: Know what led to Uber's success. (2019, March 20). Retrieved October 22, 2020, from https://jungleworks.com/uber-business-model-canvas-what-led-to-uber-success/