The 14 Social companies that produced the most founders (2026)

A founder factory is a company whose people leave to start companies of their own. This ranks every company in the graph by how many of its alumni — people who founded it or worked there — went on to found at least one company, counting only ventures started no earlier than the company itself.

Refreshed 2026-10-05 · updates nightly

#	Company	Sector	HQ	Founded	Founders	Companies started
1	Flickr	Social	Vancouver, Canada	2004	7	4
2	Highlight	Social	San Francisco, USA	2011	4	4
3	SocialNet	Social	Mountain View, USA	1997	4	3
4	Meebo	Social	Mountain View, USA	2005	3	3
5	Slay	Social	—	—	3	1
6	Business Insider	Social	—	—	2	5
7	Airtime	Social	San Francisco, USA	2011	2	4
8	Boo	Social	—	—	2	4
9	Digg	Social	San Francisco, USA	2004	2	3
10	Aardvark	Social	San Francisco, USA	2007	2	2
11	Bleacher Report	Social	—	2008	2	2
12	ThinkUp	Social	—	—	2	2
13	Foursquare Labs, Inc.	Social	United States	2009	2	1
14	OkCupid	Social	United States	2004	2	1

How this is counted. A person counts as an alumnus of a company if they founded it or worked there. They count towards the company’s score if they went on to found at least one other company that was started no earlier than the company itself. Universities and other non-commercial organisations are pruned from the graph where we can identify them. Data is community-corrected — fix something.