What do startups with $1 billion+ valuations have in common?  60% of them received funding from one or more of 5 leading VCs, the companies are significantly concentrated in a few geographic areas, they take longer than you might expect to build and some are funded by investors you might never have imagined.

The Wall Street Journal recently published a great interactive graphic on The Billion-Dollar Startup Club by Andrew Garcia Philips (WSJ), which is the source of the data I have analyzed in this article. Thirty-seven companies made their list of startups each with $1 billion or greater valuation. While it is inherently difficult to put together an accurate list, since data on companies that are not public is limited and valuations are subjective, still analyzing the data reveals some interesting insights which I’ve captured here:

Keep an eye on the Leaders: Xiaomi, China’s relatively new mobile phone manufacturer and Dropbox lead the pack each with $10 billion valuations, while Palantir, maker of data mining software for governments and large organizations is valued at $9 billion.

Consumers are the Focus: Consumer Web leads with 10 Companies (27%) followed by eCommerce with 7 Companies (19%), with Consumer Electronics holding its own with 5 companies (14%).

US Leads with China in second place: The US is the clear leader with 26 companies (70%), while China is next with 8 (22%) and Europe accounting for only 3 (8%). It should be noted that the original data may be skewed in favor of the U.S. due to the visibility into the fundraising and valuation of startups outside the US.

Location, Location, Location: A whopping 18 companies, representing 48% of those on the list are headquartered in the Bay Area of California with half of those being in San Francisco. Beijing is home to 5 of the companies while New York City has 3.

Still takes (serious) money to create value! For the 37 companies, the average company raised $366 million, while for the subset of 15 companies listed with a $1 billion valuation, the average raised was $269 million. Unless you’re lucky like Zalando which only needed $49 million (the lowest amount raised in the list) to reach a $5 billion valuation (number 5 on the list), plan on raising at least a couple hundred million dollars to build a billion dollar company.

A few VCs crush the list: Which VCs are winning in the race of single investments with $1 billion+ valuations?  Below is a list of the leading investors by the number of companies (out of 37 total) in the “Billion Dollar Club” in which they invested: 

Starbucks and Coca-Cola Invest in Startups?  It may come as no surprise that SAP Ventures, Intel Capital and Google made investments in this list, but did you know that Coca-Cola and Starbucks invested here too?  Google and Intel led with 2 investments each while SAP Ventures, Coca-Cola and Starbucks and Samsung Ventures each have one investment in the list.

Founders Lead! 78% of the Companies’ CEOs are a founder of the company. This is interesting data which helps confirm the beliefs of many that the founding team’s energy and passion are very important forces in startup success.

Building value takes time: 7.5 years. That is the median length of time in business for the 37 companies listed here. (Note that this number is not the median time that it took  companies to reach a $1 billion valuation.) Interestingly enough, if only looking at the bottom 15 companies in the list (each with a $1 billion valuation), the median length of time is also 7.5 years!  While it is a very small data set, it helps remind us that even under great circumstances, it takes a considerable amount of time to build a company with a valuation greater than $1 billion.

Hardware startups still rock! Approximately 1/3 of the companies designed and shipped Hardware as an integral part of their solution. This includes Consumer Electronics companies such as Xiaomi, Woodman Labs, maker of the GoPro line of video cameras and Jawbone, maker of Bluetooth speakers and accessories. On the Enterprise side there are companies including Nutanix and Pure Storage which both ship Flash based storage equipment for the Enterprise sector.

This number does not even include the 3 companies that design and ship clothing: VANCL, Trendy Group, and Fanatics.

Advanced Bootstrapping?  It is interesting to note that Zalando which raised $49 million and SpaceX which was funded $115 million to date with each having  a $5 billion valuation had the lowest ratios of cash raised to valuation in the list. 

Will be glad to see any of your insights in the comments section below.