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 s…
Hi, WSR team here. Great comment! 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…
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].
[0] http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bol.com#Omzet_en_winst (dutch) [1] http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coolblue (dutch) [2] http://safility.blogspot.nl/2013/08/overzicht-met-internetmi... (dutch) [3] http://corporate.takeaway.com/Over+ons/Nieuwsarchief/2