Pinterest Joins The $1 Billion Club

Congratulations, Pinterest. Welcome to The $1 Billion Club.

After your $100 million round of financing closed Thursday, the total value of your shares soared to about $1.5 billion, vaulting you into an exclusive club of venture-backed companies that have reached or exceeded the $1 billion valuation mark. (I think this may entitle you to some sort of Billionaire Boys Club sweater vest or something.)

But don’t get too full of yourself.

Sure, Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten, the lead investor in your latest cash infusion, valued you at 1.5 times what Facebook paid for your cousin Instagram. But let’s be real here. These are heady times. The Club is losing its exclusivity. Membership has nearly doubled this past year.

At least 20 private firms now call themselves $1 Billion Club members, according to an analyst from the business and financial research firm PrivCo. It feels like they’re letting anyone in these days.

Don't get me wrong, Pinterest. You're definitely special. After all, you did recently cross 20 million users, up from 1 million in July 2011, with only about 35 employees. But to keep you grounded in these bubbly times, here are nine other tech startups that recently entered The $1 Billion Club.

All slideshow statistics brought to you by PrivCo.

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• Realtime ($1 Billion)

  <strong>Funding Date: </strong>8/8/2012 <strong>Funding Round:</strong> $100 million <strong>Valuation:</strong> $1 Billion <strong>Key Investors:</strong> BRZtech (which is funded by many individual investors and The Ongoing Group) <em>Realtime founder and CEO André Parreira.</em>

• Spotify ($1 Billion)

  <strong>Funding Date:</strong> 6/17/11 <strong>Funding Round: </strong>$100 million <strong>Valuation: </strong>$1 billion <strong>Key Investors:</strong> Digital Sky Technologies, Accel Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers <strong>Current Rumored Valuation:</strong> $4 billion <em>Spotify Founder and CEO Daniel Ek (far left) attends Spotify Knocks It Out Of The Park at Stephen Weiss Studio on November 30, 2011, in New York City.</em>

• Gilt Groupe ($1 Billion)

  <strong>Funding Date: </strong>5/10/11 <strong>Funding Round: </strong>$138 million <strong>Valuation: </strong>$1 billion <strong>Key Investors: </strong>Goldman Sachs and Softbank Group <em>Gilt Groupe Chairman Susan Lyne at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in 2011.</em>

• Evernote ($1 Billion)

  <strong>Funding Date: </strong>5/3/12 <strong>Funding Round: </strong>$70 million <strong>Valuation:</strong> $1 billion <strong>Key Investors:</strong> Meritech Capital, CBC Capital, T. Rowe Price, Harbor Pacific Capital, and Allen & Company

• Box ($1.2 Billion)

  <strong>Funding Date: </strong>July, 2012 <strong>Funding Round:</strong> $125 million <strong>Valuation:</strong> $1.2 Billion <strong>Key Investors: </strong>General Atlantic, US Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners <em>Box CEO and co-founder Aaron Levie speaks at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Santa Clara, CA.</em>

• Airbnb, Inc. ($1.3 Billion)

  <strong>Funding Date:</strong> 7/25/11 <strong>Funding Round:</strong> $112 million <strong>Valuation:</strong> $1.3 billion <strong>Key Investors: </strong>Digital Sky Technologies, Andreesen Horowitz, General Catalyst Partners, Jeff Bezos (Founder and CEO of Amazon) <strong>Current Rumored Valuation: </strong>$3-4 billion

• Fanatics ($1.5 Billion)

  <strong>Funding Date: </strong>June, 2012 <strong>Funding Round: </strong>$150 million <strong>Valuation:</strong> $1.5 Billion <strong>Key Investors:</strong> Insight Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz <em>Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin.</em>

• Workday ($2 Billion)

  <strong>Funding Date: </strong>10/24/11 <strong>Funding Round:</strong> $85 million <strong>Valuation:</strong> $2 billion <strong>Key Investors: </strong>T. Rowe Price, Morgan Stanley, Janus Capital, and Bezos Expeditions

• Palantir Technology ($2.5 Billion)

  <strong>Funding Date:</strong> 9/7/11 <strong>Funding Round: </strong>$68 million <strong>Valuation: </strong>$2.5 billion <strong>Key Investors: </strong>SAC Capital and Tiger Global Management <strong>Current Rumored Valuation:</strong> $4+ billion

• Square ($3.225 Billion)

  <strong>Funding Date:</strong> August 7th, 2012 <strong>Funding Round:</strong> $225 million <strong>Valuation:</strong> $3.225 Billion <strong>Key Investors:</strong> Rizvi Traverse, Starbucks, Sequoia Capital, KPCB, Tiger Global Management <em> Square Founder Jack Dorsey speaks at the Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards April 27, 2012, in New York City. </em>

• Dropbox ($4 Billion)

  <strong>Funding Date: </strong>10/18/11 <strong>Funding Round:</strong> $250 million <strong>Valuation: </strong>$4 billion <strong>Key Investors:</strong> Index Ventures, Benchmark Capital, Goldman Sachs, Greylock Partners, Institutional Venture Partners, RIT Capital Partners, Valiant Capital Partners, Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, and Hadi & Ali Partovi

• Twitter ($8 Billion)

  <strong>Funding Date:</strong> 9/8/11 <strong>Funding Round: </strong>$800 million <strong>Valuation: </strong>$8 billion <strong>Key Investors:</strong> Digital Sky Technologies

Comments

[musefire]

03:19 AM on 05/20/2012

Yes and Pinterest is truly a marvel of interesting nothingness. The unformation Age. When 3d printers may possibly print Human Organs, ( The Economist, April 21st 2012, " Layer by Layer "
page 16, Special Report ) , let's create fluff companies that make people rich by giving the 1% a place to display their Champagne and Caviar moments. Money for nothing and chicks for free. ( © Mark Knoppfler )

[mgraczyk]

07:27 PM on 05/18/2012

Pinterest is great for social bookmarking, but what about personal bookmarking - the bookmarks for the sites you visit over and over? My company operates http://iCrumz.com, and we believe it is exactly what the world needs now - a real personal productivity booster. It's a free cloud-based Internet bookmarking service. With iCrumz.com all your bookmarks are always available using any browser from any computer, mobile phone or tablet. The iCrumz interface allows you to have 100 or more bookmarks on a single webpage without being cluttered. iCrumz also offers an import function, so you can import and consolidate all your bookmarks from all your browsers on all your devices. Check out our short (1 minute) intro video: http://youtu.be/QDD23whIlrw Contact me if you have any questions. Matthew[at]iCrumz[dot]com.

[traveler291]

11:15 AM on 05/18/2012

the site is built on copyright infringement and they are in for a very big fall. every one of their users should beware of class action against the site against individual infringement, and per the terms of service each user named will be responsible for the site legal fees.

the site is the worst case of money grubbing built on the toil of photographers without due compensation.

[helleborine]

03:21 PM on 05/21/2012

Indeed, and artists have had it up to here: http://pinterest-out.blogspot.com - this is just a typical fawning, uncritical article from Huffpost.

There are over a hundred ways that Pinterest could, and will, be sued into oblivion. The only variable is "how long will it take for the copyright attorneys to prepare their cases and go to court?"