These Four Websites Are a Billion Dollar Businesses
Not Amazon, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter……
In 2020, where there are 2 billion websites on the internet. We see many websites are making millions. But yet there are not many websites which are valued at ‘billion’ dollars
In 2020, social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are multi-billion dollar companies
On the other side e-commerce gaints like Amazon and eBay are valued as multi-billion companies
In this article, I will share four websites which are either valued (or) made billions and they are not our usual social media platforms and any business site which most of us are familiar with right now
Blue Apron
Blue Apron was a New York based startup which was specialized in delivering the chef oriented recipes at your doorstep. It was started in 2012 by Matt Salzberg who was an associate at a Silicon Valley firm in 2011.
He left his job and along with his two friends, started the business. Ilia Papas and Matthew Wadiak were his friends who helped Matt start his business. Right now, they are the co-founders of Blue Apron.
Within the first week of business going live. Matt was confident that Blue Apron was going to be a hit. Blue Apron focused on delivering fresh and organic food supply.
The recipes included on the website were simple and easy to be made at home. By dealing with the local farmers. Blue Apron was able to make one day delivery within their access.
In three years, it increased and was able to raise 2 billion dollars at a venture funding. Even in 2020, after having its ups and downs. Blue Apron had successfully delivered over 25 Million orders.
Buzzfeed
Buzzfeed is an American based internet company which shares about news, entertainment, and lot more. It was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti and John S. Johnson III.
Initially, Buzzfeed was working on the concept of creating viral content on the internet and get popular from it. But at that time, many people didn’t even knew what a viral piece of content actually means.
Buzzfeed was mostly a side-project of Jonah Peretti. Who was looking after Huffington post . In 2011, Huffington Post was sold to AOL for $315 million. After managing the Huffington post successfully. Jonah learnt a lot of things on, how to build a business from scratch.
Buzzfeed had to go through a lot like every other business. They had free writers working for them. The stories were created to generate buzz in the audience
Buzzfeed was said have a net worth of 1.5 Billion dollars. In March 2020, BuzzFeed had traffic of 1.2 Billion across all its websites. There are multiple channels of Buzzfeed like
- BuzzFeed
- BuzzFeed News
- BuzzFeed Celeb
- BuzzFeed Video
- BuzzFeed Unsolved
- BuzzFeed Nifty
- BuzzFeed MultiPlayer
There are even more channels. But these are one’s which get them more traffic. In short, these are channel which create them more Buzz.
Squarespace
Many marketers and online businesses are familiar with Squarespace. It is a New York based company started in 2003. It provides services and tools to a build website from the drag and drop technology.
Anthony Casalena is the mind behind starting Squarespace. In 2003, he created the first version of Squarespace in the University of Maryland. The site was meant to be a personal website for him. But he got $30 funding from his father and a grant from the state of Maryland.
Over the years, Casalena built the business by selling services to one customer at a time. After many iterations, Squarespace became the CMS platform that it is as of till today.
Squarespace was said to raise 1.7 Billion dollars in funding. In 2020, Squarespace market share was said to increase by 2.7%, which is more than it’s current competitor Wix.
The company is still based out of New York with more 1000+ employees working for the company, and millions of websites have been created using Squarespace services globally
Credit Karma
Credit Karma is an American based personal finance company which focused on providing free access to customer credit scores. The website has features like free tax preparation, monitoring unclaimed property database, and a tool to identify and dispute the credit report errors.
It was started in 2007, by the CEO Kenneth Lin along with his co-founders Ryan Graciano and Nichole Mustard.
In 2008 during the recession, Credit Karma was giving out their free credit score services to help their customers make right and correct financial decisions.
While Credit Karma provides free credit scores. It earns money from recommending its financial products and services based on customer financial stats
Over the years, the Credit Karma gained their customer trust. By adding new features and products in their business. They grew financially strong and were funded a lot based on their market presence and value
In 2020, Credit Karma is still going strong in the fintech industry and is said to be worth $7 Billion