There's an anti web 2.0 company in San Mateo called Guidewire. Insurance software, founded in 2000 or so. They are heads down and just killing it. They should go public within a year or so. Watch out!

They might want to come up with a different name. Just went to guideware dot com, and it looked like a giant link farm.

linden labs, maker of second life. significant economy already, way bigger long-term opportunity than either youtube and facebook, deeply invested community, and far ahead of any competition. go take a look at how much money is spent there, you'll be blown away (look at the end of the day, after a full day's activity, at www.secondlife.com).

Real Time Matrix (www.realtimematrix.com). Company has a very unique approach to search and personalization.

I think a company like www.gabbly.com and jahjah.com could find serious customers and hence have a lot of potential for its investors. However, dunno anything about how will their IPO's do if at all they are being listed.

Facebook and Youtube are obvious choices...my money is on Riya...why?...they have 15+ PHDs on their payroll and you know how Google likes their PHDs

I think Gabbly is way too early to tell. Jahjah too.

hmmm. both facebook & youtube look like home runs, and i'd agree with mac s comment that linden labs also appears in that category.

based on recent valuation alone i'd say facebook, but i don't think we've seen the end of the growth curve on either youtube or linden labs yet.

a few other companies that should have a decent-to-big payday somewhere in the future:
- BitTorrent
- SixApart
- LinkedIn
- Digg

maybe also Mozilla.com? (dunno what the picture looks like there due to the non-profit ownership, but they're certainly pulling down real dough)

and while we're on the non-profit front, couldn't fail to mention:
- Wikipedia
- Craigslist
- Mozilla.org

lastly, there's probably a bunch of adult sites and SEM/lead-gen companies no one's ever heard of that are making buttloads (no pun intended) of cash too. not my thing personally, but since you asked... ;)

- dmc

If your premise is to guide people who are not already at one of these companies, then wouldn't your own admission that Facebook has a ridiculously high valuation disqualify them as a place to go to make a million? Wouldn't you want something with a higher potential:value ratio?

Corrections on my first comment. I misread it as "Guidware." In fact, Guidewire looks quite legit -- though have no idea what its prospects are...

Hands On Mobile has the potential (if they re-focus and get the house in order). In the same space Digital Chocolate looks interesting.

call me biased but i'm gonna have to go with Simply Hired. :)

riya.com - a lot of people are impressed by what they are doing.

Good point, Mike, about Facebook. If they raised money at say $200M-$400M val, and they get sold for $2 billion, you may have plenty of upside left, but it is narrowing rapidly, and who says the $2 bill will happen? The smart set might be the next five in the door at YouTube, just before they close the round that Techcrunch was talking about earlier -- probably at a much higher valuation. In correspondence I had with the company, YouTube strongly suggested that they hadn't completed the round yet, though I'm not sure.

Friend Finder ( http://friendfinderinc.com ) - with over 25 sites, 300 employees, in the top 30 alexa, 10 years running, over 130,000,000 registered members with almost all content by members, it's the largest private web 2.0 company hiding in Palo Alto.

My vote would be for oDesk (www.odesk.com). I am biased but I think this company has a clear business model that pays into some big trends (globalization, free agency, virtualization)

for the record, Jajah is spelled without the "h" in the middle. Confusing yes but figured enquiring minds would want to know .. .

How about the hottest company financed by a Valley VC? Sequoia. The newest addition to their portfolio: Worksoft, "The Infosys of China." doiop.com/worksoftcn . Worksoft Creative Software Technology (yes, they need to shorten their name) is the best financed ITO-focused firm based in China. It's also the largest focused on the enterprise software space and U.S. customers, both ISVs and end users.

A forthcoming AlwaysOn Network "Letter from China" column and Sand Hill Group regular blog posting will cover Worksoft and the competitive landscape in the China market in greater depth. Release date: June.

Yeah I would have to agree that at first glance those two are on a roll. FB is especially doing well since I hear its revenue is steadly increasing. Also heard a rumor that Viacom has offered 175 and then over 600 for it. On the other hand YT has such high bandwidth costs plus loads of other sites are despearately planning catch up. Those big boys also have their own video search services and in business you're only allowed to grow as big as your market. And studies say that video sharing market will reach 1.5 billion by 2010. I guess they have to increase ad revenue.

Other hot corporations should be NetSuite and NexTag. Both have high revenue. I also hear that NetSuite is pre ipo and wants to do it soon. Another two corps happen to be outside of SV. They happen to be Zappos who is definitely on a roll of their own and Go Daddy which generates over a hundred million a year. I guess that is all I've got right now.

My vote would be have to be for Pay by Touch, the biometric payments company. They've raised $290 million since end of Sept, went on an acquistion tear, and (according to Bill Townsend, Lycos founder and PBT EVP) have a valuation of over $2 billion. They're patent laden, have an impressive list of strategic partners and they bought out their main rival BioPay. Biometrics lower the costs to retailers for transaction processing (while retailers moan and sue about high interchange rates)& finally, for consumers, it's more convenient and more secure during the height of awareness on ID Theft The payments industry is huge and PBT is well positioned...plus they are looking global vs. national. The naysayers scream big brother, but face it, a check is a piece of paper with all your financial information on it and with all the recent hacks on credit card info, I'd opt for biometric transactions all day.

Adbrite - a la carte advertising. I hear they are just zooming along.

beRecruited is a local small start up that I have been watching. Out of the blue they seem to have struck up some strong relationships with schools across the country as well as hit critical mass as a place for prospective student athletes.

http://www.beRecruited.com

I am always facinated by a first to market player seeing a niche and swinging in.

One to watch is beRecruited.com (www.berecruited.com). it is a hot, small silicon valley start up that is poised to break out. it is growing rapidly and has already collected 10,000s of users - ncaa coaches and high school athletes. its offering a great service that students and coaches are benifiting from - and has positioned itself to be a long term player in college recruiting.

Alrighty, Wes D. small world

And I am may have to switch my vote to Adbrite - great call.

I like Sling Media, Mobi TV, Glu Mobile. All in the digital media/mobile space and all have great management teams and backers.

my money is on 411sms.com
they are definitely the one to watch as listed in pcmag and endgadget

whos smoking crack today? obviously, "hottest" has nothing to do with being an actual business and making a profit. YouTube does not even have a solid way to generate profits and Facebook and all the other social networking sites are just generating a bunch of low quality traffic. The guy who mentioned porn sites was probably the closest to being on to something.

I think its sad that job-seekers would even ask the question "which company has the highest chances of making me a millionaire". In fact thats probably why they are job seekers and not employed or not happily employed. If their primary motivation is the money they wont get very far.

i think photo sharing and photo sharing plus blogging as well as video sharing are destined for "J" round financing before gthey die and their desks and monitors are auctioned off.

Kosmix.com - what happens when someone builds a better mousetrap than Google?

Zappos.com is my call - I think someone already nailed it though. The reason? Their market is MASSIVE -- They have changed the retailing model. If they can sell shoes over the Internet and get a 60% customer retention rate, then they can sell anything over the Internet.

Check out Liveops. These guys are making some serious dough. Most of the old Netscape client team.

And no one ever talks about them...

Greetlets.com - Web 2.0 ecards you create using simple drag & drop. Definitely a category killer in a very high-traffic market segment.

http://www.greetlets.com

Just launched this week too!.

FYI, craigslist (mentioned above) is not a non-profit, despite their confusing .org. It's a regular ol' for-profit that is doing quite well for itself.

Web 2.0 biz companies are modeled after TV network prime time shows; they live and die on sustaining ratings to achieve ad revenue. If you䴜re not in the top 50 everyday don䴜t expect to be back next season.

Agree with Facebook and YouTube. Then SimplyHired, Riya, LinkedIn, SecondLife, PhotoBucket, NetSuite, SugarCrm, Scalix, Indeed, Craigslist, Prosper, StubHub, Zimbra, oDesk, elance, SixApart.

I think PayByTouch is another Brience (look it up). Nobody but nobody needs biometric payments.

Thanks Ed. I've been searching for nice egreeting sites and saw that most of the good ones are no longer offering free services. Greetlets is a relief :)

Regards,
j

BitTorrent was mentioned earlier and, early buzz dissipation notwithstanding, is still one to watch. The company is dislocating the broad media content industry in much the same (albeit more legal) way that Napster was doing in '99-01 before their ill-advised in-your-face strategy with the RIAA became their ultimate undoing.

I also really like Zillow. Sure, the business model is a work in progress, but it is already a phenomenon in the real estate industry.

BuyBelowCost.com

It's the largest pet trading community on the web and growing like a weed.

http://www.buybelowcost.com

Facebook and YouTube made huge success in acquiring users but not in making money...
For a company with good business model would stick with Six Apart. Steady and Promising.

nextinternet.com