The Real Mythical Creatures of the Collaborative Economy: Centaurs, Unicorns, and Pegasus

Above: Version 1.1, with updated data. Version 1.0 is available here.

Collaborative Economy valuation is through the rainbow-beaming clouds. These highly funded, fast-growing, media-hounded startups are the portfolio darlings of any venture capital firm, while this crowd-based, on-demand, collaborative category enables people to access resources from peers using efficient mobile devices.

The Collaborative Economy market has received a total of $25 billion in investor funding, but not all companies are equal. Using the “mythical” creature lexicon of Silicon Valley, we’ve sorted Collaborative Economy startups based on highest valuation. We didn’t even include the “Little Ponies” that are valued at $10 million – $100M as the list would be in the hundreds.

Working with VC Dave McClure of 500 Startups, who has been championing a number of these fun terms, we constructed this handy little chart so you could see which startups have achieved high valuations.

Is this space over-funded? Over-valued? I’m sure that’s the case for some of these companies, as frothy tech markets are a normal part of the startup scene. The difference between these startups and prior years is that they are generating revenue from every transaction. In fact, most startups take a 10 to 15% cut from every transaction in the marketplace. One danger of over-valuation means that acquisition becomes near impossible, with the most obvious exit being an IPO.

If the valuations are incorrect, kindly leave a comment below, and I’ll amend the database. We plan to  eventually publish an updated version.

Related resources:

• Massive database of Collaborative Economy funding (see multiple tabs).
• All my analytics posts on the topic of funding.
• Dave McClure featured on TechCrunch: Unicorns, Centaurs, and Dinosaurs.
• Forbes: What Bubble? The Unicorn Boom Has Just Begun.
• Silicon Valley lingo is getting pretty ridiculous: Unicorns, centaurs, and ponies.
• Rant: No really, SF Lingo is really out of control.

(And yes, we know the plural of Pegasus is Pegasi.)