Emerging companies are, in their most common and interesting form, small and obscure. Microsoft and Google were once just a small group of programmers and were deep under-the-radar. And if you were invested in them then, your life changed dramatically for the better as they emerged. Less famously but still extremely lucrative were companies like the below that emerged to significant exits for themselves and their investors:
- About.com: acquired for $410 million by the New York Times
- Advertising.com: acquired for $435 million by AOL Time Warner
- Affinity Labs: acquired for $61 million by Monster Worldwide
- AllBusiness.com: acquired for $55 million by Dun & Bradstreet
- Aruba Networks: IPO at a $1 billion valuation
- Club Penguin: acquired for $350 million cash (and possible $350 million earnout) by Disney
- FraudSciences: acquired for $169 million by PayPal
- Glu Mobile: IPO at a $371 million valuation
- Last.fm: acquired for $280 million by CBS
- Mellanox Technologies: IPO at a $579 million valuation
- Orbital Data Corp.: acquired for $50 million by Citrix Systems
- Overture: acquired for $1.63 billion by Yahoo!
- Photobucket: acquired for $300 million by Fox Interactive Media
- Speedera Networks: acquired for $130 million by Akamai
- Skype: acquired for $2.6 billion by eBay
- The Generations Network: acquired for $300 million by Spectrum Equity Investors
