The 25 Most Valuable Startups

So, Mint is probably way undervalued and nearly all of the others are way (way way way! holy crap!) overvalued. Billions for Habbo and Linden? Seriously? 400mil for Slide?

But, I got a chuckle out of Ning's valuation, given that they raised roughly the same amount about a week ago...so they literally have as much cash on hand as Alley Insider has valued them at. So, the business is worthless in their eyes. Interesting. (I think the valuation of Ning during that round of financing was wildly out of whack, but it's certainly worth something.)

A simple check against Photobox's revenue shows £8.1mn in 2006, as officially filed in the UK at Companies House. That's about $16mn revenue - nowhere near the $100mn quoted.

Also shows Graham Hobson as CEO, now it is Stanislas Laurent, as of 11/07.

Are the other 'estimates' not similarly verifiable? Where do they get their data?

Craiglist is worth less than facebook? Uh, right. Only because it's trying hard to not monetize itself.

This seems to reinforce pg's latest essay, "Be Good" http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html

3 of the top 5 seem to fall into the category of companies that act like charities: Wikipedia, Craigslist, and Mozilla.

There's some good companies on there, but most... are just bubble startups, especialy 90% of that contenders category.

If thats the best 25, I don't even want to know whats below that...

This is PR. I'm willing to bet that AlleyInsider's 'advisory board' has invested in many of those startups. Time to get some buyouts going...

Look at those stupid numbers. No bubble my ass.

Do all these companies qualify as startups? Some of the ones on this list have been around for a WHILE (eg Linden Labs)

what exactly is the SAI definition of a startup?

hasn't found a business model?