The Lonergan SV150 Archive

Since 2018, we have been pub­lish­ing a new and improved list of the top pub­lic tech com­pa­nies in Sil­i­con Val­ley, which we call the Lon­er­gan SV150. 

As experts in Sil­i­con Val­ley lead­er­ship and tal­ent, Lon­er­gan Part­ners is pub­lish­ing this list as a pub­lic ser­vice. We hope you will use it as a ref­er­ence guide for bet­ter under­stand­ing the top com­pa­nies and busi­ness lead­ers in our area.

Use the links below to down­load past LSV150 rank­ings and vis­it our year­ly dis­cus­sion of insights:

Lon­er­gan SV 150 2023 Datat­able and vis­it our 2023 Insights Page

Lon­er­gan SV 150 2022 Datat­able and vis­it our 2022 Insights Page

Lon­er­gan SV 150 2021 Datat­able and vis­it our 2021 Insights Page

Lon­er­gan SV 150 2020 Datat­able and vis­it our 2020 Insights Page

Lon­er­gan SV 150 2019 Datat­able and vis­it our 2019 Insights Page

Lon­er­gan SV 150 2018 Datatable

For over thir­ty years, The Mer­cury News pub­lished a list of the top pub­lic com­pa­nies in the Bay Area, which even­tu­al­ly came to focus sole­ly on tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies, in a list they called the SV150. Start­ing in 2014, Lon­er­gan Part­ners began pub­lish­ing Who Runs Sil­i­con Val­ley, a series of lead­er­ship insights focus­ing on the com­pa­nies list­ed in the The Mer­cury News SV150 (which we will abbre­vi­ate as the MN SV150 from this point on). 

The Mer­cury News stopped pub­lish­ing their rank­ings in 2017. Since we found hav­ing a pub­lic com­pa­ny rank­ing very valu­able in dis­cussing tal­ent and lead­er­ship issues in our com­mu­ni­ty, we decid­ed to cre­ate a new and improved list, which still can be used in com­par­i­son to the MN SV150. For specifics on our method­ol­o­gy and how it com­pares to the MN SV150, con­tin­ue read­ing below.

Rank­ing Method

We ranked Sil­i­con Val­ley pub­lic tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies by pri­or cal­en­dar year rev­enue, just as The Mer­cury News did in their MN SV150.

Com­pa­ny Eligibility

To be eli­gi­ble for inclu­sion, com­pa­nies had to meet the fol­low­ing criteria:

A Pub­lic Com­pa­ny on the Cut­off Date

The cut­off date for inclu­sion was March 1, 2022. This is a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence from the method­ol­o­gy used by the MN SV150. We left off com­pa­nies that had been ful­ly acquired by the cut­off date even if they were inde­pen­dent as of Dec 31, 2021. In coun­ter­point, we includ­ed new IPOs as of March 1, 2022. The result of this change is to make the list more up-to-date as of publication.

Head­quar­tered in the Sil­i­con Valley

The com­pa­ny head­quar­ters had to be locat­ed with­in 50 miles of the HP garage in Palo Alto, the birth­place of the Sil­i­con Val­ley (our radius stretch­es far­ther north, south and east than the MN SV150). We some­times have to make judg­ment calls about what ​“head­quar­ters” real­ly means, espe­cial­ly in cas­es where com­pa­nies found­ed abroad claim legal head­quar­ters in the Sil­i­con Val­ley, but do not have their prin­ci­pal exec­u­tive offices in this area. The rise of remote work has com­pli­cat­ed this assess­ment, and for the most part we cur­rent­ly default to the loca­tion claimed by the company.

Inde­pen­dent

The com­pa­ny stock had to be trad­ed as an equi­ty on the NYSE or the NAS­DAQ. The US sub­sidiaries of inter­na­tion­al tech firms head­quar­tered out­side the USA, such as Sam­sung and Nokia, were not included.

A Tech­nol­o­gy Company

Since 2018 when we start­ed this rank­ing, we have been increas­ing­ly chal­lenged to deter­mine which of the many com­pa­nies call­ing them­selves tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies should be includ­ed. We fol­low the prece­dent set by The Mer­cury News and include all com­pa­nies for­mer­ly on the MN SV150 list that met this year’s rev­enue cut­off and had not been ful­ly acquired. New pub­lic com­pa­nies were includ­ed if they met the cri­te­ria above and they qual­i­fied as tech in nature based on their com­pa­ny descrip­tions, news infor­ma­tion about their prod­uct offer­ings, and a look at the tal­ent lead­ing the com­pa­ny, sit­ting on its board, and mak­ing invest­ments in it. While a vast major­i­ty of new com­pa­nies in Sil­i­con Val­ley describe them­selves as tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies, we make some judg­ment calls, and since tech­nol­o­gy infus­es almost all busi­ness­es today, we under­stand not every­one will agree with our def­i­n­i­tions. For exam­ple, while we do include med­ical device com­pa­nies, we do not include com­pa­nies in the biotech and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal area, unless they are grand­fa­thered in from being part of the Mer­cury News list (Gilead is the pri­ma­ry exam­ple of this).. While we do include com­pa­nies in the pay­ments space, we do not include com­pa­nies that are in banking. 

Finan­cial Data Com­par­isons & Ratios

Fis­cal Year Variations

For com­pa­nies with Decem­ber fis­cal year ends, all rev­enues, growth and prof­itabil­i­ty cal­cu­la­tions used fis­cal year data as report­ed by Yahoo Finance. When a com­pa­ny did not have a Decem­ber fis­cal year end, we adjust­ed using quar­ter­ly data to the 4 quar­ters end­ing clos­est to Decem­ber 31. Finan­cial data was sourced start­ing with Yahoo Finance and sup­ple­ment­ed when nec­es­sary with the company’s data report­ed in its 10Qs. Every effort was made to reflect amend­ed finan­cial state­ments when­ev­er possible.

Prof­itabil­i­ty

Prof­itabil­i­ty refers to Net Income divid­ed by Sales (net prof­it ratio) adjust­ed to the same time peri­od as above. Net income may include results from dis­con­tin­ued oper­a­tions, restruc­tur­ing and merg­er-relat­ed expens­es, invest­ment gains or loss­es, gains on extin­guish­ment of debt, as well as any amor­tized or non­re­cur­ring charges.

The Stan­ford Dish ban­ner pho­to at the top of this page is by Jawed [CC BY 3.0 ], from Wiki­me­dia Commons