Private
60 companies
Stripe
Financial Technology / Payments
Stripe made payment integration take seven lines of code instead of six months and $100,000. But that simplicity required 10× more engineering effort...
IKEA
Retail / Furniture
IKEA demonstrates 80 years of phototropic discipline - systematically bending toward resource gradients while maintaining core identity. Founded in ru...
ByteDance
Technology / Social Media
The Chinese tech giant that proves you can work 996, dominate video, and still lose the productivity war to biology. ByteDance (owner of TikTok/Douyi...
SpaceX
Aerospace
SpaceX exemplifies founder-fatal migration strategy - Elon Musk invested $100 million of his $180 million PayPal windfall into the company, nearly goi...
Whole Foods
Organic Grocery Retail
Whole Foods serves as the case study for sexual reproduction in business - specifically, genetic recombination through M&A. When Amazon acquired Whole...
Zara (Inditex)
Retail / Fashion
Zara moves from design to store in 2-3 weeks. The industry average is 6-9 months. That speed premium isn't about fashion - it's about correctly identi...
Airtable
Software
Airtable combines spreadsheet functionality with database capabilities. Platform economics with network effects through no-code adoption.
Anduril Industries
Defense Technology
Anduril builds advanced defense technology including autonomous drones. First-mover advantage with vertical integration in defense tech.
Anheuser-Busch InBev
Alcoholic Beverages
AB InBev controls ~25% of global beer through acquisitions and economies of scale. Predator-prey dynamics using scale to squeeze costs while premiumiz...
Anthropic
Artificial Intelligence
Anthropic executes K-selection in an r-selected industry: fewer offspring, higher parental investment, longer development cycles. While OpenAI ships 7...
Bolt
Mobility & Delivery
Estonian mobility and delivery platform competing with Uber across Europe and Africa. Offers ride-hailing, food delivery, and scooter sharing services...
Canva
Software
Canva constructed an entirely new niche: design for non-designers. The 99% excluded from Adobe's professional tools now create 30 billion designs acro...
Carta
Fintech
Equity management platform for startups, investors, and employees managing cap tables. Provides valuation services and secondary trading marketplace....
Checkout.com
Fintech
Payment processing platform providing infrastructure for online and in-person transactions. Processes hundreds of billions in payments annually for ma...
Chime
Financial Technology
Chime provides mobile-first banking with no monthly fees. First-mover advantage in neobanking with exponential growth.
Cohere
Artificial Intelligence
Cohere develops large language models for enterprise applications. Platform economics with economies of scale in AI infrastructure.
Cruise
Autonomous Vehicles
Cruise develops autonomous vehicles majority-owned by General Motors. First-mover advantage with vertical integration.
Databricks
Software
Databricks functions as an ecosystem engineer, creating entirely new substrate for data processing. The lakehouse architecture—combining data warehous...
Devoted Health
Healthcare
Medicare Advantage insurance provider using technology to improve senior healthcare. Vertically integrated model with own care delivery network. Value...
Discord
Technology
Discord operates as a colonial organism with federated intelligence. Its 28.9 million servers function as semi-autonomous colonies, each with distinct...
Epic Games
Gaming
Epic Games develops Fortnite and Unreal Engine. Platform economics through game engine licensing with network effects.
Faire
E-commerce
B2B wholesale marketplace connecting independent retailers with brands and makers. Offers net-60 payment terms and free returns to retailers. Valued a...
Fanatics
E-commerce
Fanatics dominates licensed sports merchandise. Vertical integration with platform economics across sports commerce.
Gopuff
Delivery & Logistics
Instant delivery service operating own micro-fulfillment centers for convenience items. Delivers snacks, drinks, and essentials in 30 minutes or less....
Gorillas
Delivery & Logistics
German ultra-fast grocery delivery startup promising delivery in 10 minutes. Raised over $1 billion in funding during the quick-commerce boom. Faced c...
Grammarly
Software
Grammarly provides AI-powered writing assistance across applications. Network effects through viral adoption with first-mover advantage.
H&M
Fashion Retail
H&M pioneered fast fashion through vertical integration compressing trend-to-store time. Resource partitioning targets value-conscious fashion consume...
Heineken N.V.
Brewing
Heineken is a Dutch brewing company and the world's second-largest brewer, competing with AB InBev and Carlsberg in the consolidated global brewing in...
Kalera
Vertical Farming
Stacks photosynthesis vertically like coral reefs growing upward toward light - LED arrays replacing sun, nutrient solution replacing soil. Each urban...
Karat
Technology
Technical interviews as artificial selection - experienced engineers probe coding ability through standardized challenges. Companies outsource their f...
King
Mobile Gaming
Triggers compulsive engagement through color-matching patterns, like cuckoos exploiting parental instincts with exaggerated begging. Candy Crush deliv...
Kiwibot
Autonomous Vehicles
Deploys sidewalk robots that forage like ants across campus territories, following invisible trails to deliver food. Each bot operates semi-autonomous...
Klarna
Financial Technology
Klarna provides buy now, pay later services with first-mover advantage in BNPL. Network effects from consumer and merchant adoption.
Kodiak Robotics
Autonomous Vehicles
Programs autonomous trucks to navigate highways like caribou traverse tundra, using sensor fusion to perceive environments in all weather conditions....
Kraken
Cryptocurrency
Operates cryptocurrency exchange infrastructure with the resilience of its namesake cephalopod. Their platform handles billions in daily trading volum...
Kumon
EdTech - Tutoring
Teaches mathematics through incremental difficulty progression that mirrors how organisms master skills through graduated practice. Students advance t...
Labelbox
AI Infrastructure
Provides data labeling platforms that train machine learning models through supervised learning, mirroring how parent animals teach offspring to recog...
Lacework
Cybersecurity
Secures cloud infrastructure through behavioral anomaly detection that identifies threats like immune systems distinguish self from non-self. Their pl...
Mars
Consumer Goods/Pet Food
Global confectionery and pet food company that acquired P&G's pet food brands (Iams, Eukanuba) for $2.9B in 2014 as part of P&G's portfolio pruning st...
Miro
Software
Miro provides collaborative whiteboard platform for distributed teams. Network effects through viral adoption with exponential growth.
Mistral AI
Artificial Intelligence
Mistral AI develops efficient large language models with open-source focus. First-mover advantage in European frontier AI.
Nestlé
Food & Beverage
Nestlé is the Swiss multinational food and beverage company ranking as the world's largest food company with revenues of CHF 91.4 billion (2024), a po...
Northvolt
Energy Storage
Swedish battery manufacturer building European battery production capacity for electric vehicles. Partnerships with major automakers including VW and...
Notion Labs
Software/Productivity
Notion functions as modular organism—every piece of content is a block that can be rearranged, nested, and connected. Like coral polyps or fungal hyph...
Ola (ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd.)
Mobility & Technology
Ola is India's largest ride-hailing platform, competing with Uber in the Indian market and expanding internationally. The company has diversified into...
OpenAI
Artificial Intelligence
OpenAI exemplifies r-selection in the AI ecosystem: rapid reproduction of models (7 families in 18 months), wide dispersal (800 million weekly users),...
Perplexity AI
Artificial Intelligence
Perplexity AI provides AI-powered search with citations. Platform economics challenging traditional search with predator-prey dynamics.
Plaid
Financial Technology
Plaid provides financial infrastructure connecting applications with bank accounts. Platform economics with network effects in fintech ecosystem.
Red Bull
Beverages
Red Bull created and dominates energy drink category through marketing-first vertical integration. Mutualistic networks where media attracts audiences...
Revolut
Financial Services/Fintech
European fintech company founded in 2015 by Nikolay Storonsky (former Credit Suisse derivatives trader) and Vlad Yatsenko after Storonsky was charged...
Ro
Healthcare
Direct-to-consumer telehealth company offering online diagnosis and prescription services. Started with men's health, expanded to broader healthcare c...
Scale AI
Artificial Intelligence
Scale AI provides data labeling for training AI models. Platform economics with economies of scale in annotation services.
Sephora
Beauty Retail
Sephora transformed beauty retail through platform economics with open-sell format. Network effects through brand curation and loyalty program.
Shein
E-commerce
Shein is a Chinese fast-fashion e-commerce company that has become one of the world's largest online retailers through AI-driven trend prediction and...
Substack
Media
Substack enables writers to publish newsletters with paid subscriptions. Platform economics with network effects in independent media.
Swiggy (Bundl Technologies Pvt. Ltd.)
Food Delivery & Technology
Swiggy is one of India's largest food delivery platforms, competing with Zomato and offering quick commerce through Instamart. The company has revolut...
Trader Joe's
Retail/Grocery
American grocery chain founded in 1967 by Joe Coulombe in Pasadena, California. Originally a convenience store chain called Pronto Markets, Coulombe p...
Valve Corporation
Gaming
Valve operates Steam gaming platform with first-mover advantage in digital distribution. Platform economics with 120+ million active users.
Waymo
Autonomous Vehicles
Alphabet's self-driving car subsidiary is both a success story and a cautionary tale about corporate incubation. When Waymo emerged from Google X in...
Zapier
Technology/Automation
Distributed-first automation company that designs remote work topology intentionally, emphasizing asynchronous communication and transparent informati...