Numbers of tech companies when they were small

This is a blog post that I wish existed when I started my startup journey.

I like collecting numbers (e.g., website traffic, domain name price, revenue…) of tech companies when they were small. Those numbers are from the internet, books, podcasts, and anecdotes. Let me know if any numbers are inaccurate: wenbin@listennotes.com

Google

• Number of daily searches 
  • Late 1998, 10k searches / day
  • Early 1999, 100k searches / day
  • Late 1999, 7 million searches / day
• Late 2000, burn rate $500k+/month
• Initial ad product in 2000 - $15 cpm first result, $12 cpm second result, $10 cpm third result, 350 advertisers initially.
• Oct 2000, launched AdWords; $85 million revenue in 2001; still based on cpm
• Feb 2002, adapt cost per click; ads ranking: relevance, performance (clicks) => more relevant, more clicks, lower cost/click. More ads, more intention to search
• 2002, $10 million in bank. After AOL deal, Google became profitable. $1B revenue; abandon cpm model all at once.
• 2003, $0.5B cash flow, operating margin 76%, entire search ad market $2B. 35% search engine market share.
• 2004, Yahoo market cap $38B; Google $30B

Reference: Internet History Podcast

Microsoft

• 1975: 3 FTE (full-time employees), revenue $16,005 ($76K in today’s money)
• 1976: 7 FTE, $22,496 ($106K in today’s money)
• 1977: 9 FTE, $381,715 ($1.8M in today’s money) — $21k flat fee for Apple basic, but apple sold 1M computers
• 1978: 13 FTE, $1,355,655 ($6.4M in today’s money)
• 1979: 28 FTE, $2,390,145 ($11M in today’s money)
• 1980: 40 FTE, $7,520,720 ($35.7M in today’s money) — hired Steve Ballmer
• 1981: 128 FTE, $16M ($76M in today’s money)
• 1982: 220 FTE, $24M ($116M in today’s money)
• 1983: 476 FTE, $50M ($237M in today’s money)
• 1984: 608 FTE, $97M ($463M in today’s money)
• 1985: 910 FTE, $140M ($666M in today’s money)

Yahoo! Japan

• initially curated 30k websites in the directory
• April 1, 1996, launch. Website traffic:
  • Jan 1997, 5 million page views / day
  • Jun 1998, 10 million / day
  • July 2000, 100 million / day
  • May 2002, 300 million / day
  • Mar 2004, 700 million / day

Yahoo

• Sep 1994: initially curated 2k sites, 50k visits / day
• Late 1994: netscape made yahoo the default directory button. first 1 million visits day
• Jan 1995: 10k sites, 100k unique visitors / day
• Yahoo: TV guide of internet — TV guide was the largest magazine on planet then.
• April 1995: sequoia put $1M for 1/4 of yahoo. By 1999, sequoia stake became $8B. Yahoo first office 1500 sqt
• Early 1995: 50 surfers, each added 1000 sites to directory per day
• Feb 1996: 6M visits/day
• April 1996: IPO, valued at $850M. Two cofounders got $150M each
• Late 1996: 14M page views/day, 75% page views unsold

Amazon

• Nov 1994: registered amazon.com
• July 1995: launched officially
• Summer 1995: raised $985k for 20%
• July 1996 WSJ article boosts . Raised $8M for 13%

Geocity

• When bought by yahoo, 19 million unique visitors / month, 3rd most traffic website, after yahoo and aol

Hot or not

• October 2000: Soon after launched, 2 million page views/day. 2 months later, Alexa top 20 website
• Peak: 50 million pv/day
• After launching dating, $0.5 million/month revenue , converting 5% users to pay; then 20% users to pay
• First 3 years, $3~4 million / year revenue , just 2 cofounders; then hire employees
• Year 4, 5, cofounders got tired; revenue at $6 million / year
• Peak. revenue $20k / day; or $7.5m annual revenue at peak
• 500k DAU for dating site, 5–10 marriage / day
• Launch dating function in 2 months after launching hot or not
• Each cofounder got $50k annual salary in first 2 years
• People router of the internet
• Reference: YouTube

PayPal

• 10k users in two month; 100k in next month

Blogger

• 2300 blogs -> 100k -> 700k (one year later)

Wikipedia

• in a month, 600 articles
• In a year, 20k articles
• In 2006, 45000 active editors

Facebook

• 2004, end of March: 30k users
• Summer 2004: 100k, 34 schools. Mark and Edwardo each put $10k. Later summer, zuck family put $85k for server fee
• Thiel put $500k for 10%
• End of summer 2004: 200k users
• End of sep 2004: 400k users die to school expansion
• Nov 31 2004, 1 million users
• Summer 2005: 20k new users per day; 5 million users; 230 million page views per day; $1 million per month
• Dec 2005, 50 employees
• Sep 2006: open to whole world to register, 20k new users / day jump to 50k new users / day
• User growth
  • 1 million — End of 2004.
  • 5.5 million — End of 2005.
  • 12 million — End of 2006.
  • 20 million — April 2007.
  • 50 million — October 2007.
  • 100 million — August 2008.
  • 150 million — January 2009.
  • 175 million — February 2009.
  • 200 million — April 2009.
  • 250 million — July 2009.
  • 300 million — September 2009.
  • 350 million — End of 2009.
  • 400 million — February 2010.
  • 500 million — July 2010.
  • 608 million — End of 2010.
  • 750 million — July 2011.
• Funding
  • $500k for 10.2%, val $5M — Summer 2004 (angel, convertible notes)
  • The investment was originally in the form of a convertible note, to be converted to equity if Facebook reached 1.5 million users by the end of 2004. Although Facebook narrowly missed the target, Thiel allowed the loan to be converted to equity anyway.
  • $12.7M (Accel Partners), val $98M — April 2005 (series A)
  • $27.5 (Greylock), val $500M — April 2006 (series B) — FB profit $5.66M for 2005
  • $240M for 1.6% (Microsoft), Val $15B — Oct 2007 (series C)
  • $60M (Li Ka-shing) — Nov 2007
• Launched Wirehog — August 2004 (sunset Jan 2006) -- initial plan: drive Facebook's traffic to Wirehog. 
• Bought facebook.com for $200k — August 2005
• Launched photos — Oct 2005
• Talk with Yahoo for $1B acquisition; Open to everyone with email; launch newsfeed — Sep 2006
• Hired Sanberg, Mar 2008
• Launched Like button — Feb 2009
• First time cash flow positive — Sep 2009
• $1B revenue (+65% over previous year, 56% from US, 12% from Zynga) — Early 2012

Reddit:

• 2016 (??) traffic via Google Analytics Real-Time

Tencent

• 2003: Tencent.com daily pv 700k
• 2003: bought qq.com for $60k (Reference in Chinese)
• 2004: before ipo — founders share 46.5% combined, MIH 46.3% , IDG 7.2%
• 2004: after ipo — cofounder & CEO Pony Ma 11.43%, cofounder Zhang Zhidong 6.43%, other three cofounders 9.87% combined.
• 2005: revenue — Baidu 300m RMB, Tencent 1.4b RMB, sohu 100m RMB, netease 210m RMB
• 2005: QQ registered users 440 million, monthly active user 170 million, concurrent users 16 million
• 2010: It took them 2 months to launch WeChat v1, with 2 iOS devs, 2 android devs, 2 backend devs, 1 designer, and Allen Zhang.

Sina

• 2006: Sina Blog had MAU 20m.
• Bought weibo.com domain name for 8m RMB.

YouTube

• Feb 14, 2005: youtube.com domain registered
• Early 2005, development & lauched as a dating site
  • April 23, 2005: first YouTube video
  • April 28, 2005: dating site
• June 11, 2005, officially launched. Use Flash (98% penetration) to solve video codec problem; vs competitors use quicktime (low penetration)
• August, top 10,000 website (peak 28M pageviews/day; usually 15M pv/day); 100,000 videos per day, with 15,000 videos in database in total. Hosting cost $4000/month.
• Sequoia investment memo (Sep 2, 2005): $1m seed + $4m series A; own 30% after series A; conditioned series A: sign up $5000+ ads deal; build self-serve ads product; recruit vp biz; scale infra to support 1 million video views/day (10x); develop biz plan
• Oct 2006: 65 employees, acquired by Google for $1.6B

Yelp

• 2004: launched
• 2009: 26m unique visitors

Superhuman

• Feb 2014, wrote business plan
• Late 2014, raised $750k and spent 20% buying superhuman. com , and $45k to turn wireframes into high fidelity mockups
• Reference: Acquired

Spotify

• Oct 2008: 1828 MAU
• Dec 2008: 200k MAU
• March 2009: 1m MAU
• Sep 2009: 3.2 MAU

Douban

• 2005 : founder was writing code by himself for 3 months in a Starbucks at Douban Hutong in Beijing.
• 2009: 10 million registered users
• 2013: 75 million registered users, 210 million daily pv

Pinterest

• 4 months after launch, 3000 registered users
• Reference: TechCrunch (Thanks, @sharemywin)

Hacker News

• 2007: 1600 visitors/day
• Aug 2019: 5 million unique visitors / month

Survey monkey

• 1999: started at Wisconsin
• 2009: 12 employees , $24 million revenue
•  

Audible

• Oct 9, 2019: 470k audio books

3721

• 2000: China had 20m internet users; 3721 had 200k business Chinese names, all free; every day hits 12m times
• 2001: started monetization
• 2002; yahoo China had 2m pv/day; with help from 3721, yahoo China got additional 3–4m pv/day
• 2003: sina wanted to buy 3721 for $25m w/ 25% equity; sohu $35m w/ 35%; alibaba $60m. Yahoo boutht 3721 for $120m.

Baidu

• 2001: paid ranking : day 1 revenue ¥1.9; day 2 revenue ¥3； day 3 revenue ¥10；day 5 revenue ¥200.

Sohu

• 2002: SMS revenue growth ¥100k /m — ¥1m/m

Alibaba

• 2002 feb — 2003 Jan : $2m/m burn rate
• 2003 Jan — : lay off and close offices. Reduce burn rate to $500k/m
• 2003: Q1 user increased by 50%; did ads on CNBC — Alibaba took off, because SARS cut the tie between China supply and us merchants offline.

Tudou

• April 2005: launched. Half year later, 40k visitors/ day, 30k videos and audios in total , 60% video

Hao123

• 1999 ~ 2004: Alexa #26

Box

• First check $80k for 1/4 of Box. Reference: Startup Grind
• Mark Cuban put $300k in Box. Funding happened via email. No phone call. No meeting. Just email.

Drift

• 2014: founded
• Oct 2019: 300 employees

Kuaishou:

• Nov 8 2019: 200M DAU, 400M MAU, 1.3B videos, 200M published contents last year
• Nov 8 2019: 50% users overlap between douyin and kuaishou

NYTimes

• Nov 11, 2019: 1500 reporters

IMDb

• April 2006: 18.6m unique visitors
• Nov 2019: 250m unique visitors

Wikihow

• Jan 15, 2005: launch
• End of Jan 2005: less than 3000 unique visitors, 10 edits
• April 2005, 100k unique visitors / month
• Dec 2009: 20 million unique visitors monthly, 6 employees
• nov 2019: 125 million unique visitors / month; 200k articles

The Points Guy

• 2010: started the blog, 1 post/day
• Feb 2011: 15,000 readers; $200/credit card approval (some $500/card); nytimes report
• 20 clicks/day => 20,000 clicks/day (after nytimes report); borrowed $5000 from parents before getting affiliate money from bank, because of net 90 pay.
• First employee: his sister in law, a stay at home mom.
• 2012: sold website; 25,000 uniques/day
• 2016: launch chase sapphire credit card.
• Jan 2020: 10m uniques

Pornhub

• 2019: 42B visits in total; 115m visits / day ; 39B searches in total ; 6.83m new videos;

Bubble

• Jan 2020: average user pays $800/ year; highest pays $8000/month; 300k users; 22 full time employees

Ars Technica

• Jan 17  ~ Jan 26, 2020 (1 week): 1.35m page views, 701k uv, avg time on site 1:59.

Uber

• Early investors

Buffer

• Apr 4, 2020: Alexa rank 1522, reference: Twitter

Tiny / MetaLab

• April 2020: in podcast interview https://lnns.co/VSBJcL06Kl9 — when they had $7m profit / year, they started to buy other companies in 2013

Cloudflare

• 2020, Apr: 1,200 employees and 83,000 paying customers.

StackOverlflow

• May 2020: 120m monthly uniques, 41st most visited site

Dev.to

• Sep 14 2018: Alexa ranking 13732, Unique visitors 1.5 million/month
• Aug 1, 2019: Alexa ranking 6688, unique visitors 4 million/month

Twilio

• January 2009: revenue $1789
• Febrary 2010: revenue $68302; website new visitors 26220; new registration 1005; new paid user 240. Be able to handle 5000 simultaneous calls.
• Q1 2020: $365m quarterly reveneue. WhatsApp made up 7%.

Dropbox

• Bought dropbox.com domain for $300k.
  • Reference: https://lnns.co/N1TryG_XRMU