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Curated category

Companies based in San Francisco

  • IGNIGN launched on the 29th of September 1996, born as a network of five separate websites covering gaming platforms that barely existed yet.
  • InstagramInstagram reached one billion registered users in June 2018 - a number that took Facebook four years longer to achieve. The platform launched for iOS in…
  • RedditReddit launched in June 2005 with a problem its founders could not admit to anyone: the site was empty. Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, two roommates fresh…
  • DoorDashDoorDash controls 56 percent of the food delivery market in the United States, more than any other platform. It also holds 60 percent of the market for…
  • Salon.comSalon.com launched in November 1995 with an unusual self-description: a "smart tabloid." Founder David Talbot, a former arts and features editor at the San…
  • Bleacher ReportBleacher Report began in 2005 as a conversation between four friends, the kind of sports talk that usually stays in someone's living room.
  • GoodreadsGoodreads launched in January 2007 with a deceptively simple premise: recreate the feeling of browsing a friend's bookshelf.
  • LucasfilmGeorge Lucas established Lucasfilm on the 10th of December 1971 in San Rafael, California. The company began with just five employees working out of a small…
  • AirbnbAirbnb began not with venture capital or a business school pitch, but with an air mattress on the floor of a San Francisco apartment.
  • Visa Inc.Visa Inc. processes more transactions in a single year than most people could count in a lifetime. In 2025, its global network handled 257.5 billion…
  • AnthropicAnthropic finished training its first AI model in the summer of 2022 and then sat on it for months. The company wanted to avoid triggering what it described…
  • The AthleticThe Athletic began in January 2016 as an independent, subscription-only sports website, launched with no advertising and no name recognition outside Chicago.
  • MasterClassMasterClass lets subscribers watch pre-recorded lessons from Serena Williams, Gordon Ramsay, Martin Scorsese, and Neil deGrasse Tyson.
  • Business WireBusiness Wire began with sixteen media outlets in California and a man named Lorry I. Lokey who believed companies deserved a direct line to the world.