How are the "Famous Founder" Startups Doing?
fa•mous found•er: a widely known startup founder
When I started this post I thought I could do a roundup in a couple hours. It turns out that there are so many interesting companies with famous founders that I'm going to need a series.
The series starts with some former PayPal guys. It's inspiring to see a group of people who've already "made it" continue to swing for the fences.
Note, the list is focused on currently active startups, so companies like Tesla and Slide are not included. The list also does not include investment funds like Clarium Capital Management.
SpaceX
Elon Musk's SpaceX, founded in 2002, is the 5th most valuable startup in TheStartup100 with a valuation of $4.8B and is hands-down the most ambitious startup today (and maybe of all-time). This is the company's ultimate goal:
The company was founded in 2002 to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.
Elon Musk wants to help people "live on other planets," and he's actually launched rockets (SpaceX has a $1.6B contract to supply the ISS). He's also not going to let the U.S. government stand in his way, announcing last week that SpaceX is suing the US government because the company wants to compete for an even bigger contract - a $7.2B contract to launch military satellites.
SpaceX also wins the award for the coolest product pages of any startup - frickin rockets!
Affirm
Max Levchin is going back to payments with his new startup Affirm, a super-simple, secure way to pay for online purchases with no credit card number. Consumers enter their mobile phone number, name, birthdate, and email, and pay Affirm later. Affirm's approach has less friction than Bill Me Later (acquired by PayPal) and is similar to Klarna, a Sequoia Capital backed company that has raised almost $300MM for a similar payments service in Europe. Given all the Heartbleed and security fears this approach seems timely:
Affirm is also the safest way to buy: since we don’t use traditional credit card numbers, there’s nothing to steal.
The service is being tested in the wild on this site and you can sign up here.
One wrinkle I noticed is that the sign up on Affirm requires the last 4 digits of your SSN. I wonder if this is going to be required on merchant sites and whether it will increase friction for users.
Affirm has raised a few million and has about 25 employees. I'm guessing we'll hear more about Affirm later this year.
Homerun
Keith Rabois has pulled together a small team to disrupt the real estate market with a venture code named Homerun. Keith announced the company to the press earlier this month and some people on Secret were speculating about the new company. Keith jumped into the thread to answer questions:
(Side note: How cool is that?)
He also told VentureBeat this:
My belief is that if you added a frictionless, convenient, simple process, more people would sell their homes
Homerun is an ambitious idea with a huge market opportunity. They are hiring - see the Secret thread for more info.
About TheStartup100
TheStartup100 and this blog are a project of Frank Anderson. I'm an internet entrepreneur; former investment banker and consultant; and studied at the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago. You can email me at frank(at)thestartup100.com.