Coming Soon: the Lonergan Silicon Valley 150 - 2021 Rankings

The Pandemic Era Remakes the Silicon Valley 150

Mark Lonergan, April 7th, 2021

2020 saw big cor­po­rate changes in the Sil­i­con Valley.

Lon­er­gan Part­ners is pleased to bring you the timeli­est ever Lon­er­gan SV 150 – our annu­al rank­ing of the top pub­lic tech com­pa­nies head­quar­tered with­in fifty miles of the old HP Garage — to paint you a pic­ture of 2020 tech sec­tor results.

The final rank­ings will be avail­able for down­load on our web­site in the next two weeks. In the mean­time, here are some up-to-the-minute obser­va­tions I think you’ll be inter­est­ed in. 

Aston­ish­ing growth in Lon­er­gan SV150 total mar­ket cap
March 31, 2021 year-over-year growth in mar­ket cap was an incred­i­ble 83% same-com­pa­ny increase. 

Over half of LSV150 com­pa­nies saw their mar­ket caps rebound over 100% from year-pri­or March 31, 2020 lev­els, which was near a mar­ket low for the year.

The top two per­form­ers on this met­ric were two com­pa­nies led by women CEOs: Sun­run (LSV#83) grew mar­ket cap 913% under CEO Lynn Jurich, ben­e­fit­ting from the cur­rent administration’s big sup­port for green projects; and Upwork (LSV#125) grew mar­ket cap 655% under CEO Hay­den Brown, as pan­dem­ic tail­winds expand­ed the free­lance-gig economy.

Rev­enue growth win­ners were not con­fined to pan­dem­ic sto­ry’ stocks – but two of them did top the list

In a same-com­pa­ny com­par­i­son, total Lon­er­gan SV150 rev­enues grew 11% (to a total of $1.2 tril­lion), a respectable but not record-break­ing increase. The ratio of com­pa­nies grow­ing ver­sus los­ing rev­enue (115 grow­ing to 35 con­tract­ing) resem­bled recent pri­or years. 

While aggre­gate growth was not remark­able, indi­vid­ual com­pa­nies did see some record-set­ting increas­es, however. 

Our first-ranked com­pa­ny for rev­enue growth in 2020 was Zoom Video Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (LSV#48) — up 326%.

Our sec­ond-ranked com­pa­ny was new­ly pub­lic Door­dash (LSV#46) — up 226%.

Some hon­or­able men­tions: Snowflake (LSV#104) up 124%, and Square (LSV#23) up 101%, which were ranked #4 and #5 on rev­enue growth.

New­ly pub­lic Airbnb makes the list of top rev­enue losers in 2020

Airbnb (LSV#39) rev­enues were down 30%, putting it high on the list of those com­pa­nies who lost rev­enue in 2020. Also among the top rev­enue losers were new­ly pub­lic Open­door (LSV#50) — down 46%; Lyft (LSV#53) — down 35%; GoPro (LSV#89) down 25%; and Uber (LSV#20) — down 21%. 

Fol­low us for more insights — com­ing soon!

This year’s rank­ing pro­duced many new and sur­pris­ing Sil­i­con Val­ley trends, including:

  • sev­en com­pa­nies from last year’s list moved their head­quar­ters out of the Sil­i­con Val­ley — is this a trend or one time surge?
  • a bumper crop of new pub­lic com­pa­nies made the list
  • the first SPAC-merg­er com­pa­ny makes the list
  • growth in the num­ber of founder-led com­pa­nies, as well as women board directors
  • no momen­tum at all in the num­ber of women CEOs
  • the great pause” seems to have impact­ed both CEO turnover, and the num­ber of ranked com­pa­nies being acquired

For detailed insight on the top­ics above, look for more of our posts in the com­ing weeks. Fol­low us on LinkedIn or vis­it our web­site at lon​er​gan​parters​.com/blog.

Update: It’s here! The 2021 Lon­er­gan Sil­i­con Val­ley 150 rank­ing has been pub­lished. Down­load it here and read our insights and analy­sis.