I am Dutch, so naturally I checked the top 3 for the Netherlands. Number 3 (Booking.com) and number 1 (Marktplaats.nl, the dutch craigslist), I can understand because they are indeed big and well-known sites.
However, the number 2, apparently, is a website called "Shapeways", which is supposedly worth $175M. I have never heard of it and I asked some of my colleagues and they never heard of it either. After visiting shapeways I found that it is a 3D printing community site.
After some research I found that it is actually founded in the USA, and just happens to have an office in the Netherlands.
I am not Dutch, and have limited knowledge of startups, but Shapeways is very well-known. They were one of the first to capitalize on 3d printing boom, so obviously they have high valuation. The fact that it's bigger than booking.com is surprising, but it's not surprising at all that it is in top 3.
Xero was making big waves as a new accounting software and had millions of overseas investment poured into it. TradeMe is our version of eBay which was basically the first widely-used site in New Zealand.
However number 2, "Diligent Boardbooks" which listed on our stock exchange in 2007, however started in 2000. They seem to sell "Board Portal" software which allows boardmembers to "securely store and access documents" as well as do video conferencing etc.
The Netherlands have an interesting situation. Even though everyone would say the startup ecosystem is booming, the country has not managed to produce BIG success stories. We selected Shapeways as one of the top 3 companies there. They've raised almost $50M to date (http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/shapeways) and we put our guesstimate in a range of $150M - $200M. The company is actually founded by Dutch founders and they do have quite a big number of their employees in the Netherlands (close to 50 but should double-check on this one).
With that in mind, it'd be interesting to hear what would you put as the 2nd (or 3rd) most valuable Dutch internet company? Thanks!
I'd like to name these companies off the top of my head:
bol.com: originally started in Germany, but head office is in the Netherlands. They are the "dutch" Amazon, with 405 million euros in sales in 2012 [0], the same year it was also sold to Ahold for a reported 350 million.
coolblue: Dutch online electronics store, like newegg. They launched specialized webshops for just about every category of consumer electronics. They did 248 million euros in sales in 2013 [1]. All three founders made it into the top 10 of wealthiest self-made dutch entrepreneurs below the age of 40 [2].
Takeaway.com: takeaway websites, best know for the dutch and belgian websites "thuisbezorgd.nl" and "thuisbezorgd.be", which have a market share of 90% and 70% in their respective countries. They received a 74 million euro ($103 mln) round B this year [3].
Similarly for Israel, would CheckPoint really count as an Internet company in the sense you use here considering their product revenue breakdown? If so in USA, you may as well consider many network infrastructure companies there, Or some cellular data companies may be considered within this list.
I would guess that maybe Layar or WeTranser have higher valuations. Blendle must be the fastest well-known grower, with a very exportable concept but I doubt they have a very high valuation right now.
The country location for a company in this research was determined by where the bulk of the employees are currently. The intent of this definition is to show which countries are most capable of building big internet companies, not where the founders are coming from.
Yahoo!Japan is actually an independent company from Yahoo. It is roughly 30% owned by Softbank and 30% owned by Yahoo. It is listed as it is the top 3 internet company in Japan.
Yahoo is not listed, because it is not the top 3 company in the US.
Afaik Shapeways was founded in the Netherlands as a Philips spinout. They later moved to the US, I assume for a better investment climate but that's just a guess. Could be that they somehow re-founded the company there legally and then made the Dutch office a subsidiary.
However, the number 2, apparently, is a website called "Shapeways", which is supposedly worth $175M. I have never heard of it and I asked some of my colleagues and they never heard of it either. After visiting shapeways I found that it is a 3D printing community site. After some research I found that it is actually founded in the USA, and just happens to have an office in the Netherlands.