Hail & Farewell

Historic Upheaval in the 2021 Lonergan SV150

Mark Lonergan, April 14th, 2021

In our post from last week, we promised more info on big cor­po­rate changes in the Sil­i­con Val­ley, brought to you as a result of the timeli­est ever Lon­er­gan SV 150 – our annu­al rank­ing of the top pub­lic tech com­pa­nies head­quar­tered with­in fifty miles of the old HP Garage.

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

Leav­ing the Sil­i­con Val­ley was Popular

Sev­en com­pa­nies on last year’s Lon­er­gan SV150 rank­ing moved head­quar­ters out of Cal­i­for­nia in time for this year’s pub­li­ca­tion. Move­ment away from Sil­i­con Val­ley in sig­nif­i­cant num­bers is an unprece­dent­ed trend. 

Which com­pa­nies from last year’s list have moved?

Last Year’s RankCom­pa­ny (New head­quar­ters)2020 Rev­enues ($ mil­lion
adjust­ed to quar­ter clos­est to cal­en­dar year end)
Mar­ket cap (March 312021)
7Ora­cle (Austin, TX)$39,402$203.4 b
8HPE (Hous­ton, TX)$26,866$20.5 b
46Avaya (Durham, NC)$2,901$2.3 b
50Align (Tempe, AZ)$2,472$41.5 b
70Viavi (Scotts­dale, AZ)$1,107$3.6 b
129Nat­era (Austin, TX)$391$8.8 b
136Avi­at (Austin, TX)$261$0.4 b

Palan­tir got the jump on this trend – its recent move to Den­ver meant it nev­er made the Lon­er­gan SV150 rank­ings at all. If it had stayed in Palo Alto for its Sep­tem­ber direct list­ing, it would have been ranked LSV#79.

Some oth­er com­pa­nies with rumors about pend­ing depar­tures are Tes­la (LSV#8), based on remarks by Elon Musk; and Drop­box (LSV #58) and Splunk (LSV#51), with rumors of their moves inspired by their CEOs’ report­ed plans to move their res­i­dences to Austin, Texas. No idea if these head­quar­ters moves will actu­al­ly hap­pen, or if some oth­er com­pa­nies may be plan­ning to move as well. 

But Going Pub­lic was Pop­u­lar Too

After a long pan­dem­ic-relat­ed pause in access­ing pub­lic mar­kets start­ing in March of 2020, the last half of the year saw an explo­sion of pub­lic trad­ing enthu­si­asm for Sil­i­con Val­ley based com­pa­nies, includ­ing long await­ed IPOs such as Airbnb (LSV#39). For the first time, ranked com­pa­nies also accessed pub­lic mar­kets as a result of direct list­ing (Asana LSV#141) and SPAC merg­er (Open­door LSV#50) as well.

All twelve new pub­lic com­pa­nies are list­ed below:

    RankCom­pa­ny (year pub­lic)
    IPO unless not­ed
    Busi­ness Descrip­tion2020 Sales
    ($ mil­lion)
    GrowthProf­itabil­i­tyMkt Cap
    (March 312021)
    39Airbnb (2020)Online mar­ket­place for tem­po­rary lodging$3,378-30%-136%$114.3 b
    45McAfee (2020)Secu­ri­ty software$2,90610%-10%$9.8 b
    46Door­dash (2020)Online Food deliv­ery platform$2,886226%-16%$42.2 b
    50Open­door (2020 SPAC merger)Online home sell­ing service$2,583-46%-11%$11.8 b
    52Wish (2020)Online e‑commerce platform$2,54134%-29%$9.8 b
    96Uni­ty (2020)Video game software$77243%-37%$27.9 b
    101Affirm (2021)Online shop­ping install­ment loan platform$67031%-15%$18.2 b
    104Snowflake (2020)Cloud data warehousing$592124%-91%$50.5 b
    138Posh­mark (2021)Online fash­ion marketplace$26228%6%$2.9 b
    141Asana (2020 direct listing)Project man­age­ment software$22759%-93%$4.6 b
    145Sumo Log­ic (2020)Real-time data ana­lyt­ics service$20331%-40%$2.0 b
    149C3.ai (2020)AI soft­ware platform$17310%-36%$6.7 b

    Note: the pub­lic debut cut­off date for the Lon­er­gan SV150 rank­ing was Jan­u­ary 312021.

    One thing is for cer­tain, change is a con­stant for Sil­i­con Val­ley, and 2020 saw just how resource­ful and par­a­digm-chang­ing the com­pa­nies of the LSV150 can be. In our next blog post, we will be look­ing at some of the lead­er­ship trends at work in the Sil­i­con Val­ley. Please come back to see more insights on our blog the week of April 192020.

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