Companies like Uber and YouTube changed society in the early aughts by revolutionizing how we travel and consume content. This decade had its own share of life-changing companies across several industries. Whether social media, transportation, food, dating, or work-related companies, these seven corporations altered how we go about our days. And with a combined worth over $150 billion, they are cashing in to do it.
1. Instagram
Founded in 2010 by Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom, Instagram has changed the fabric of several industries from food to hospitality and been the impetus for the phrase FOMO (fear of missing out). Many critiques of social media and digital lives today hinge on the idea that people are doing it for the ‘gram: performing their vacations, their businesses, and their lives for their Instagram followers to see while missing the moment at hand.
But whether you love it or hate it, Instagram appears to be in it for the long haul. The company—acquired by Facebook in 2012 for $1 billion—is now estimated to be worth over $100 billion with 500 million daily active users.
2. Snap
Snapchat was founded just one year after Instagram in 2011 by Evan Spiegel, who remains CEO today, and Bobby Murphy, current CTO. At its inception, the app straddled the line between social media and messaging service in a way that continues to ripple through both industries today. Notably, Snapchat was the first to debut a “story” feature of ephemeral posts for all of a user’s followers to see for just 24 hours in 2013. Instagram followed suit to great success in 2016.
The company went public in 2017 and has a market cap around $21.3 billion as of December. It has 210 million active daily users.
3. Lyft
Though Uber was founded before the turn of this decade, Lyft raced onto the scene in 2012 and quickly rose to compete with the original ride share service. Lyft found quite a bit of success as an alternative service when Uber was navigating several scandals and lawsuits. It now owns 28.8% of the ride-share market as of October, according to Statista, second only to Uber.
Lyft was one of the first blockbuster tech IPOs of 2019, beating Uber to the trading block. It has a market cap around $14.2 billion as of December, and has 22.3 million active riders. Founders John Zimmer and Logan Green remain with the company as president and CEO, respectively.
4. DoorDash
While Seamless was founded in 1999 and Grubhub in 2004, DoorDash’s arrival on the scene in 2013 turned the food delivery industry on its head as it was adopted beyond just a few markets. Founded by Tony Xu, Evan Moore, Andy Fang, and Stanley Tang, the company helped take the entire industry— home to household names like Postmates and Uber Eats—mainstream nationwide by successfully catering to a generation that wanted to treat themselves while staying home.
Doordash, valued at $13 billion as of November according to PitchBook data, has the highest market share in its category at 27.6%.
5. Impossible Foods
Impossible Foods was founded by Patrick O. Brown in 2011 but really burst into the mainstream in 2018 with the popular Impossible Burger. As plant-based diets are on the rise, the environmentally-friendly meat substitute is, too. Impossible products are now sold in over 17,000 restaurants worldwide, including Burger King, Little Caesar’s, and Cheesecake Factory.
Its latest round of funding in May valued the company at $2 billion.
6. Tinder
Online dating, once a desktop-bound activity awash in stigma, is now ubiquitous. And for that, we have Tinder to thank. Tinder, the gamified dating and hook-up app, was founded by Sean Rad and Justin Mateen in 2014. Since then, countless dating apps have popped up, including Bumble, Grindr, OkCupid, and Hinge. At the beginning of this decade, you might have met your soulmate at a bar. But now, around 40% of all couples met online, according to a 2019 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Tinder has over 2 billion views per day and is the dating app with the most users, followed by Bumble, according to Statista. The app is owned by Match Group, which owns several other dating apps like OkCupid and Hinge.
7. Slack
Slack likes to say it revolutionized the workplace, and that might very well be true. The does-it-all service for the modern office worker combines messaging, file sharing, conference calling, and collaborating. The company was founded in 2013 by current CEO Stewart Butterfield and made headlines in 2019 for going public through the oft-unused method of a direct listing.
Over 12 million people use Slack daily, and the service is growing each year. The company has a market cap around $11.6 billion as of December.
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