Oldest Start-Ups Alive
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By Jean Jacques Maleval | June 17, 2022 at 2:03 pm
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 |
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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