2020's Top Platform Companies

In spite of a devastating pandemic and a moribund economy, many platform businesses have not only survived, but also thrived, scaled and prospered in 2020. The year also saw many historic IPOs.

Methodology

Here, I have ranked the platform companies and marketplaces based on the percentage gains in market value.

Some of the smaller companies like Peloton, Zillow, Teladoc, Fiverr etc. also managed to achieve a big rise in market capitalization, but this also gives too much weight to these companies. For example, Fiverr increased its market value in 2020 by 837%. For this reason, only the companies with a minimum $10 billion market capitalization were considered for the final ranking. Some of the companies which went for an IPO towards the end of 2020, such as Airbnb and DoorDash, were also excluded from the final list.

Data Sources

Around 100 companies’ financial data was obtained from publicly available data sources such as Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance and Quandl. 17 out of the Top 30 platform companies are based in the United States and 5 in China.

Key Findings

• Zoom topped the rankings with a 408% increase in market capitalization during 2020.
• Collaboration platforms, e-commerce platforms, marketplaces and developer platforms dominated the list.
• Only companies with a market capitalization of at least $10 billion were included.
• Companies that went public towards the end of 2020, such as Airbnb and DoorDash, were excluded from the analysis.

Top 30 Platform Companies