Founders: Brian Chesky
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
Website: airbnb.com
Type of business: Travel Marketplace

Founded in August of 2008 and based in San Francisco, California, Airbnb is a trusted community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique accommodations around the world – online or from a mobile phone. Whether an apartment for a night, a castle for a week, or a villa for a month, Airbnb connects people to unique travel experiences, at any price point, in more than 19,000 cities and 192 countries. And with world-class customer service and a growing community of users, Airbnb is the easiest way for people to monetize their extra space and showcase it to an audience of millions.


Founders: Dalton Caldwell & Bryan Berg
Founded: Early 2010
Website: app.net
Type of business: Mobile App Platform

App.net is a mobile app distribution and monetization platform for iOS and Android. App.net helps developers optimize their products’ online presence and provides them tools to manage, monitor and promote their apps with greater efficiency.

Founders: Mark Britto
Founded: 2009
Headquarters: San Francisco
Website: boku.com
Type of business: Mobile Payments Platform

BOKU is creating the standard for online payments using your mobile phone, making it easy to pay for digital goods and social experiences across the web. With a strong focus on reliability and security, BOKU’s goal is to bring bank-grade payments technology and mobile users together on the web, creating a trusted, viable and accessible market for consumers, publishers and carriers alike.

Founders: David Lieb, Andy Huibers, Jake Mintz
Founded: 2008
Headquarters: Mountain View, CA
Website: bu.mp
Type of business: Mobile Interactions

Bump is a mobile application that lets phones connect and interact by physically bumping. One of the top 10 mobile apps of all time, Bump makes your phone usable in the real world, letting users share photos, music, apps, connect on social networks, and more by just bumping phones.

Founder: Christopher Poole
Founded: 2010
Headquarters: New York, NY
Website: canv.as
Type of business: Community platform

Canvas is a community platform for sharing and playing with media, built for modern web browsers.

Founders: Kevin Rose
Founded: 2004
Headquarters: San Francisco
Website: digg.com
Type of business: User Driven Social Content

Digg is a place for people to discover and share content found on the web. From the biggest online destination to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users. You won’t find editors at Digg—we’re here to provide a place where people collectively determine the value of content. In doing so, we’re changing the way people consume information online.

Founders: Jason Goldberg
Headquarters: New York, NY
Website: fab.com
Type of business: Design E-Commerce

Fab.com is the fastest growing e-commerce company on the planet.  Each day, Fab.com presents its members with an exclusive collection of design sales across dozens of categories ranging from home products to jewelry to artwork to apparel to workplace to toys and outdoors products, all at up to 70% off of retail prices.



Founder: Mark Zuckerberg
Founded: 2004
Headquarters: Palo Alto, CA
Website: facebook.com
Type of business: Social Networking Service

Facebook is a social networking service and website with more than 500 million active users. Fundamental features to the experience on Facebook are a person’s Home page and Profile. The Home page includes News Feed, a personalized feed of his or her friends updates. The Profile displays information about the individual he or she has chosen to share, including interests, education and work background and contact information. Facebook also includes core applications – Photos, Events, Videos, Groups, and Pages – that let people connect and share in rich and engaging ways. Additionally, people can communicate with one another through Chat, personal messages, Wall posts, Pokes, or Status Updates.

Founders: Gil Elbaz
Founded: 2007
Headquarters: Los Angeles, CA
Website: factual.com
Type of business: Factual was founded to provide open access to better structured data. And that means developers can build more innovative apps, publishers can access high-quality content, and ultimately, everyone, can make better decisions.

The company provides a platform where anyone can share and mash open data on any subject. For example, you might find a directory of California restaurants, a database of endocrinologists, or a list of American Idol finalists. It provides smart tools to help the community build and maintain a trusted source of structured data. And this data can be used through widgets and APIs to help application developers and content publishers be more innovative and productive.

Founders: Dennis Crowley, Naveen Selvadurai
Founded: 2009
Headquarters: NYC
Website: foursquare.com
Type of business: Social Networking

Foursquare is a mobile application that makes cities easier to use and more interesting to explore. It is a friend-finder, a social city guide and a game that challenges users to experience new things, and rewards them for doing so. Foursquare lets users “check in” to a place when they’re there, tell friends where they are and track the history of where they’ve been and who they’ve been there with.

Founder: Andrew Mason
Founded: November 2008
Headquarters: Chicago, IL
Website: groupon.com
Type of business: Local daily deals

Groupon features a daily deal on the best stuff to do, see, eat, and buy in more than 565 cities around the world. By promising businesses a minimum number of customers, Groupon can offer deals that aren’t available elsewhere.

Groupon brings buyers and sellers together in a fun and collaborative way that offers the consumer an unbeatable deal, and businesses a large number of new customers. To date, it has saved consumers more than $300 million and generates millions in revenue for the businesses it features.

Founders: Kevin Systrom
Headquarters: San Francisco
Website: instagram.com
Type of business: Mobile photo sharing

Instagram is a photo sharing application for the iPhone. It allows you to quickly take pictures, apply a filter, and share it on the service or with a number of other services.

Founders: Alex Asseily and Hosain Rahman
Headquarters: San Francisco
Website: jawbone.com
Type of business: Products and Services for the Mobile Lifestyle

For more than a decade, Jawbone has developed products and services for the mobile lifestyle unparalleled in their innovation, ease-of-use and sophistication of design. The company is the creator of the award-winning and best-selling premium ICON Bluetooth headset; the inventor of NoiseAssassin® technology, the world’s first and only military-grade noiseeliminating technology; JAMBOX, the first intelligent wireless speaker and speakerphone; as well as THOUGHTS, a free mobile service that allows users to utilize their voice in a new way. A 2010 IDSA Design of the Decade winner, Jawbone is committed to delivering innovative products that improve the mobile lifestyle through ever-changing software and wearability. Jawbone is privately-held and headquartered in San Francisco.

Founders: Babur Habib, Osman Rashid
Website: kno.com
Type of business: Education Hardware

Kno aims to change education, the way people learn, and even change the world. Without being too pretentious about it, that’s our mission. So we’ve built what we believe is an amazing learning device—the textbook of the future—to accomplish that. But we didn’t drop everything.

The textbook of the future embodies a lot of what we know and have always loved about the textbook of the past.Kno is a digital textbook—and we use the term loosely—that is about to change the way knowledge is transmitted and the way students learn. We started Kno from a tabula rasa—a blank slate—to create a new slate.

Founder: Evan Reas, Shubham Mittal, Prasanna S.
Founded: 2010
Headquarters: Palo Alto, CA
Website: lal.com
Type of business: Local interactions

LAL is the way for college students to interact with their classmates around them.

Founders: John Hering, Kevin Mahaffey, James Burgess
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
Website: mylookout.com
Type of business: Smartphone Security

Your smartphone is vital to your work and everyday life. Lookout provides award-winning security to protect you from viruses, malware and spyware, the ability to backup and restore your data, and tools to help locate lost or stolen phones. Lookout’s unique cross-platform, cloud-connected applications are designed to be lightweight and efficient while delivering the best protection possible. Our Mobile Threat Network scans applications worldwide, allowing us to find and stop threats before they ever become a risk to you — so you can rest assured that you’re protected from the threats that can get between you and your phone, automatically. All in a friendly, easy to use app. Lookout products are available on the Android and iOS platforms.


Founders: Dr. Ren Ng
Headquarters: Mountain View, CA
Website: lytro.com
Type of business: Photography Technology

In a time when everyone thought the single purpose camera was a thing of the past, Lytro has made a dramatic breakthrough that revolutionizes the experience of photography. Founded in 2006 by CEO Ren Ng, the first Lytro light field camera offers photographic capabilities never before possible, such as focusing a picture after it’s taken, and creates interactive living pictures that can be enjoyed by friends and family online. For additional information, visit Lytro.com.

Founders: Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, Evan Sharp
Headquarters: Palo Alto, CA
Website: pinterest.com
Type of business: Consumer

Pinterest is a virtual pinboard that lets you organize and share the things you love.

Founders: Eric Vishria, Tim Howes
Founded: 2009
Headquarters: Mountain View, CA
Website: rockmelt.com
Type of business: Internet Browser

RockMelt is providing a fundamentally better Web experience by re-imagining the browser around how you use the internet today.

Founders: Brian Lee & MJ Eng
Headquarters: Santa Monica, CA
Website: shoedazzle.com
Type of business: Online retail service

ShoeDazzle.com is an online styling service where women who love shoes and fashion get personalized style recommendations every month, brought to them by our team of celebrity stylists. As a client, you’ll see high-quality shoes, handbags and jewelry—as well as exclusive collections and limited-edition deals—at a price that lets you indulge: just $39.95 each. Shipping is free, returns and exchanges are effortless, and there’s never any obligation to buy or membership commitment. Just take a fun style quiz to see your style profile and check out what celebrity stylists choose for you.

By building an intimate, customized experience through creative innovation, social engagement and world-class service, we strive to make women feel pampered and beautiful.

Founders: Niklas Zennstrom, Janus Friis
Founded: 2003
Headquarters: London
Website: skype.com
Type of business: VoIP Software

Skype is a peer-to-peer Internet telephony service that is free for Skype-to-Skype calls. The service also allows Skype users to call mobiles and landlines, and vice-versa. Skype has special charge plans for non-Skype-to-Skype calls. Skype is expanding from its traditional computer-based calls to mobile applications. Skype was founded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis who were also the founders of the file sharing application Kazaa and the peer-to-peer television application Joost. Skype is different than other VoIP services in that it uses a peer-to-peer model instead of a server-client model.

Founders: Joshua Schachter, Paul Rademacher, Nick Nguyen
Headquarters: Palo Alto, CA
Website: tastylabs.com
Type of business: Social software

Founder: Suli Ali and Ian Spivey
Founded: 2009
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
Website: tinyco.com
Type of business: Mobile Social Games

TinyCo makes fun, engaging social games that are played on mobile devices like iPhone and Android phones. Our games live in persistent worlds where players can play for hours or just for five minutes while waiting for the bus. TinyCo’s goal is to lead the way in making mobile games more fun, and more fun to play with your friends, for years to come.

Founder: Stewart Butterfield
Founded: 2009
Headquarters: Vancouver, San Francisco
Website: tinyspeck.com
Type of business: Games, video, and entertainment

Tiny Speck is a gaming company whose first product is Glitch, a Flash-based massively multiplayer online game set to launch in Fall 2010.

Founder: Jack Doresey, Biz Stone, Evan Williams
Founded: March 2006
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
Website: twitter.com
Type of business: Social Networking and Microblogging

Twitter is a real-time information network that connects you to the latest information about what you find interesting. Simply find the public streams you find most compelling and follow the conversations.

At the heart of Twitter are small bursts of information called Tweets. Each Tweet is 140 characters in length, but don’t let the small size fool you—you can share a lot with a little space. Connected to each Tweet is a rich details pane that provides additional information, deeper context and embedded media. You can tell your story within your Tweet, or you can think of a Tweet as the headline, and use the details pane to tell the rest with photos, videos and other media content.

Founders: Ze Frank
Founded: 2010
Website: zefrank.com
Type of business: Games

Stealth mode.

Founders: Mark Pincus, Michael Luxton, Eric Schiermeyer, Justin Waldron, Andrew Trader, and Steve Schoettler
Founded: 2007
Headquarters: San Francisco
Website: zynga.com
Type of business: Network of gaming applications

At Zynga, our mission is to connect people through games. We make social games that are free and accessible for everyone to play.

Every day millions of people interact with their friends and express their unique personality through our games, which range from harvesting plants to baking apple pies to playing poker. Zynga was founded in January 2007 named for his late American Bulldog, Zinga. Loyal and spirited, Zinga’s name is a nod to a legendary African warrior queen.