Raph's Website » How many hot startups are VW-based?

How many hot startups are VW-based?

April 29th, 2008 (Visited 1319 times) Tags: 3d web, habbo, linden lab, metaverse, stardoll, startups, twitter, webkinz

The SAI 25 Live is this new index that is trying to track the hottest startups based on an estimated valuation figure. As you look at the chart, realize these figures are in thousands, so the top of the chart is valued in the billions.

Several of the top 25 are familiar names to readers of this blog and folks who hang around the virtual worlds space:

Webkinz
Habbo (why it’s not listed as Sulake, I don’t know)
Linden Lab
Stardoll

Of course, if you are on the Metaverse Roadmap bandwagon, then the stuff like Twitter also fits into the eventual metaverse picture, via the “lifelogging” quadrant. And Meebo, which many think of as just a chat app, has had great success with Meebo Rooms, which is basically am embeddable chat room that you can put on any website — another step towards web-wide synchronous interaction.

The table is intended only to show privately held companies, so many of the big players are absent. And many of these valuations are purely hypothetical — there isn’t necessarily a buyer at that price, and the markets aren’t exactly hot for IPOs right now either. But it does serve to demonstrate the attraction of virtual worlds as a category.

It’s also interesting to me how many of the others are ones I have never heard of. Tudou is a video-sharing site in China. Ozon and Yandex are Russian. There’s a bunch of job-seeking sites, and a bunch of ad networks.

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Techmeme wrote on April 29th, 2008 at 6:19 pm:

Discussion: STARTUP CHATTER, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs,Raph’s Websiteand Between the Lines

Virtual Worlds News wrote on April 29th, 2008 at 9:53 pm:

virtual worlds companies with a total current valuation of 4,858,027,000. Webkinz (#7, $2 billion), Sulake (#9, 1.2 billion), Linden Lab (#11, $1.1 billion), and Stardoll (#17, $4.5 billion) are leading the way. Though,as Raph Koster points out, if you look at the metaverse as a collection of various technologies (The Metaverse Roadmap perspective), there are even more hot companies like Twitter or Meebo that are drawing interest. The valuations are just educated guesses–

Michael Chui said on April 29th, 2008 at 1:44 pm:

Habbo (why it’s not listed as Sulake, I don’t know)

Why is Wikipedia considered a “startup”? That’s not a company. It is nigh impossible to take these people seriously when they make a mistake like that.

And why are they putting valuations on non-profits anyways?

Samu said on April 30th, 2008 at 2:13 am:

It took me a while to understand what this post has to do with Volkswagen AG.

JuJutsu said on May 2nd, 2008 at 12:53 pm:

…many of these valuations are purely hypothetical…

My hypothetical valuation of me puts me above Habbo/Sulake

Siddar said on May 5th, 2008 at 9:27 pm:

Someone needs to remeber this in a couple years when VW stock bubble bursts. Really those numbers are crazy. Most VW are fads that will only be hot for three to five years then slowly fade away as masses move onto the next hot VW. I dont see how those VW listed are makeing profits big enough to justify those valueations.