Huge Companies That You Probably Didn’t Know Were Founded In The 2010s
We hear about new companies every single day, some businesses succeed while others don't. The 2010s was a decade that brought some big and successful companies to life. These companies may have started out of homes and garages but have grown to become household names today.
Remember when companies like Uber, Lyft, and Twitter didn’t exist? These companies changed our lifestyles and helped shape the decade as a whole. Here are the companies that you might have forgotten were founded in the 2010s.
Uber
Getting into a stranger's car was unthinkable a few years ago but the ride-sharing company, Uber has now made this the norm. This company has helped change the way we travel and has made getting around a total breeze. The app allows you to request a ride to any destination in your city.
Since being founded in 2009, Uber is estimated to have 110 million worldwide users and a 67% market share for riding-sharing.
Blue Apron
Blue Apron is a company that has made preparing food easier than ever. The company is a go-to solution for anyone who doesn't want to deal with the hassle of grocery shopping but still wants to eat healthily. Based on your preferences, the company mails you fresh ingredients to prepare your favorite meals.
Blue Apron issued an IPO in 2017 while it had a valuation of $2 billion. The company has made life much easier for people on the go but it has also led to the development of a lot of companies that offer a similar service.
DoorDash
Food delivery has made our lives easier than ever and the company that is a pioneer in this field is DoorDash. The company allows you to order food from a variety of restaurants through the app and charges a small delivery fee. This reduces the time and effort it takes to physically pick up the food at your favorite restaurant.
The company was founded by Tony Xu in 2013 and has a total valuation of $12.6 billion. The company has had immense growth since its inception and is available in 4000 cities in both the U.S and Canada.
Udacity
Udacity is an online platform that provides educational courses and 'nanodegrees' on a variety of subjects. The company was founded in 2011 by David Stavens, Sabastian Thurn and Mike Sokolsky. A lot of the courses offered on the website focus on computer programming and computer science.
Today the company is valued at around $1 billion making the company a unicorn. The company is a for-profit organization but the founders of the company recently launched a Pledge to America’s Workers initiative. Through the program, Udacity will give out 100,000 free programming classes to low-income workers.
From world news to your daily personal thoughts, Twitter has become a force of nature in the tech world. The company was founded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey and gives users the ability to post updates about their life in real-time.
Today the app has more than 100 million followers and is a great way to connect with your friends around the world while contributing to discussions on different topics. In addition to tweets, the app also lets you share pictures, videos, and retweet others' posts as well.
Honest Company
Established in 2012, the Honest Company sells baby and beauty products and was founded by Hollywood star, Jessica Alba. The actress founded the company after she realized the ingredients in baby products were not of the highest quality. The goal of the company was to create baby products that were ethical and free of chemicals.
The company then expanded to a range of clean beauty products that won't include synthetic materials and petrochemicals. The company received an additional $200 million in funding to expand the brand to Europe and around the world.
Lyft
Another ride-sharing app and a direct competitor of Uber is Lyft. While Uber disrupted the taxi services, it was its competitor Lyft who made the biggest impact on the transport industry. The company was founded in 2012 by Logan Green and John Zimmer- two years after Uber was founded.
Lyft now owns 29 percent of the ride-sharing market in the U.S and when it went public in 2019, the company had a whopping value of $24 billion. The Lyft mobile app offers a variety of services like scooter, bicycle and food delivery.
Instacart
With the hustle and bustle of our everyday lives, shopping for groceries goes right at the bottom of our to-do lists. Thankfully, companies like Instacart offer the perfect solution for this. The app was founded in 2012 by Apoorva Mehta and allows shoppers to buy all of their grocery needs on the app.
A personal shopper does all the actual shopping for the groceries which are delivered to your house. The company is worth $7 billion today and recently partnered with Whole Foods to make grocery shopping easier. They hope to partner with many more retailers in the future.
Our go-to app for inspiration on anything and everything is Pinterest. The app provides useful information on everything from wedding décor to interior design from a variety of websites and blogs. Users of the app can create boards and pin posts that interest them. Other users can then share these pins on their own boards.
The app was founded in 2010 by Ben Silbermann and Paul Sciarra who wanted to revolutionize the way we share ideas. However, the app was originally founded as a platform for online shopping. Pinterest has 291 million users today and a valuation of $12.7 billion when it issued an IPO.
Snapchat
For its 210 million daily active users, Snapchat has become a natural part of daily life and receiving a funny video or picture from friends makes the day that much better. The company was founded by Evan Seigel and two of his friends at Stanford in 2011.
The company was originally named Picaboo because of the duration of the pictures and videos. Once you send a picture to a friend, it disappears in a couple of seconds. Pictures posted on your profile remain there for 24 hours.
Texting through your phone is a thing of the past as instant messaging platforms have changed the way we connect with our peers. One company that has made large strides in this field is WhatsApp. The company was founded in 2010 by former Yahoo employees Jan Koum and Brian Acton. Today the app has more than 900 million users.
The app works on WIFI and has made it incredibly easy to communicate with people around the world. The company was acquired by Facebook for $22 billion and the founders and employees of the company were given $3.5 billion in stock options. The founders became billionaires within five years of founding the company.
Slack
Slack has changed the way employees in many companies communicate with each other internally. The company was originally founded as a communication platform for a video game company in Vancouver. But the company became immensely popular and is now used by businesses all around the world.
Slack was founded in 2009 by Stewart Butterfield and has a current valuation of $23 billion. Microsoft has tried to recreate a platform like Slack but it was not able to curb the appeal of the instant messaging app.
WeWork
Renting office space for many founders and businesses was incredibly time consuming and complicated. This is in addition to furnishing the workspace to suit the culture of the company. WeWork offered a solution to all these problems with co-working and office spaces that could be rented out by companies.
The small offices have 'hot desks' which is ideal for freelancers and remote workers who need space to work. The company was founded by Adam Neumann in 2010 who came under scrutiny for behavioral issues in 2019. The company has a current valuation of $8 billion.
Stripe
Online shopping has become a way of life for many people and one company set out to make the payment method for online retailers a hassle-free experience. The company was founded by brothers Patrick and John Collison in 2010 and is regarded as one of the most innovative companies in the world.
The company created a device that can be attached to your phone and allows you swipe cards with the payment details registered to the app. This makes point of sale transactions incredibly easy. The company is the third most valuable startup in the U.S.
Zoom
Working remotely is now common in many companies and Zoom has made this more efficient than ever. The company offers video conferencing solutions to make it easier for employees to communicate more efficiently with each other. The company is headquartered in San Jose, California.
Zoom was founded by Eric Yuan in 2011 and offers a variety of communication software to its employees like chat and mobile conferencing. During the IPO, the company had a valuation of $100 billion and the price of its stock doubled in just a few weeks.
Wish
With websites like E-Bay and Etsy, e-commerce has become more popular than ever. Online shopping not only gives you access to the best deals but it is also delivered right to your doorstep, which helps you save time and money. Wish is an online platform that gives customers access to a wide range of low-cost products for the budget shopper.
The company was founded in 2010 by Piotr Szulczewski and Danny Zhang as a budget alternative for other e-commerce platforms. Wish has a total valuation of $1.2 billion as of 2019.
