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Oldest Start-Ups Alive

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Start Up F1

How do you write the world? The Economist, Wikipedia and The Wall Street Journal all use the non-hyphenated version startup. You will also notice that if you Google start-up, it will autocorrect to start-up.

The Cambridge Dictionary uses “start-up” and defines it as “a small business that has just been started.”

Yes, but for how long you consider the new company continues to be a start-up? One, 2, 5, 10 years or more?

Here we have our own definition: how long the new firm is not closed, not being public or not acquired, it continues to be a start-up after eventually closing financial rounds.

Corresponding to these criteria, we have counted 1,064 companies in our data base since 1961, with 529 of them not anymore being a start-up and 535 continuing to be alive.

Below are the 12 oldest start-ups all disappearing (but Imperial Technology, Vicom Systems, Micromem Technologies) and the 10 oldest ones alive born in 1994 and before.

12 oldest start-ups

Year funded Company CEO Comments
1961 Memorex
(Silicon Valley, CA)
  IPO in 1965; acquired by Burroughs in 1982; Imation acquires Memorex brand for $330 million in 2006
1966 Xyratex (Havant, UK) Steve Barber $48 million IPO in 2004
1974 Imperial Technology (El Segundo, CA) Stephen O’Callaghan SSDs
1978 Priam (San Jose, CA) Glen Maddalon HDD maker; under Chapter XI in 1989; sold in 1990 in small parts to Atasi, Sequel, Michael Warner
1982 Vicom Systems (Fremont, CA) Sam Tam virtualization software and hardware; chapter XI in 2003 but restarted in 2006
1982 NetDriven Solutions (Toronto, Canada) Frank Tersigni solution to automatically backup selected folders and files to NetDriven Solutions remote data center; no more Web site in 2006
1982

McData
(Broomfield, CO)

John F. (Jack ) McDonnell $350 million IPO in 2000; sold to EMC in 1996 for $230 million
1983 Seek Systems (Woodinville, WA) Wayne Smith RAID and accelerators
1984 Dantz Development (Orinda, CA) Larry Zulch backup software for Windows and Macintosh; acquired by EMC in 2004
1985 Micromem Technologies   (Toronto, Canada) Joseph Fuda non-volatile magnetic memories (MRAM); formerly Avanti
1985 Exabyte
(Boulder, CO)
Juan Rodriguez 8mm helican scan tape drives; assets sold to Imation and ProStor
1985 PrairieTek
(Longmont, CO)
Steven B. Volk 2.5-inch HDDs; closed in 1991; patents acquired in 1992 for $18 milion by Conner Peripherals and Alps

10 oldest start-ups alive

* $ million

Year funded Company Web site CEO Total investment* Comments
1978 Imperial Technology
(El Segundo, CA)
imperialtech.com Stephen O’Callaghan 11 SSDs
1982 Vicom Systems (Fremont, CA) vicom.com Sam Tam 26 virtualization software and hardware; Chapter XI in 2003 but restarted in 2006
1983 Seek Systems (Woodinville, WA) seeksystems.com Wayne Smith RAID and accelerators
1985 Micromem Technologies   (Toronto, Canada) micromeminc.com Joseph Fuda 16 MRAM; formerly Avanti
1988 DDN
(Chatsworth, CA)
datadirectnet.com Alex Bouzari 9.9 HPC storage; founded in 1988 under MegaDrive Systems that merged with ImpactData, in 1998, to create DataDirect Networks
1989 Unitrends Software (Burlington, MA) unitrends.com Mike Coney 18.1 business recovery software for SMBs
1991 Estorian
(Bellevue, WA)
estorian.com Kevin Riegelsberger 5.5 formerly TeraCloud; interactive message management enabling archiving and data loss prevention
1991 Archive Systems (Fairfield, NJ) archivesystems.com Rick Kushel 20 outsourced service that captures, stores, routes, and archives documents online
1993 Neverfail Group (Reading, UK) neverfailgroup.com Neil Robertson 40 data protection and recovery software
1994 Corsair Components
(San Franciso, CA)
corsair.com Andy Paul   PC components including memory, SSD, flash keys
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