TL;DR It seems likely that Sam Altman will lose his 2015 bubble bet, with mid-stage companies growing like crazy but early-stage and late-stage companies growing a bit slower than he expected. A big IPO for Uber and big fundraising round for Gitlab could still give Altman the win.<p>*<p>In March 2015 Sam Altman published his Bubble Bet blog post (https://blog.samaltman.com/bubble-talk), in which he decries the talks of a tech bubble and proposes a bet on the future of tech valuations. His proposition is that by January 1 2020:
1. The top 6 US companies (Uber, Palantir, Airbnb, Dropbox, Pinterest, and SpaceX) which at the time were worth just over $100B, will be worth at least $200B.
2. A group of mid-stage YC-backed companies (Stripe, Zenefits, Instacart, Mixpanel, Teespring, Optimizely, Coinbase, Docker, and Weebly) at the time worth $9B will be worth at least $27B.
3. The YC Winter 2015 batch - worth at the time around $0—will be worth at least $3B.<p>One person, Boston-based VC Michael de la Maza, agreed to bet $100,000 against Altman, with the loser agreeing to donate the money to a charity of the winner’s choice.<p>One year to the deadline, what’s the status?<p>I checked the known public valuation of the mentioned companies, using news sources and company announcements. Another tool was YC’s valuation list (https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/). If you have better data, I’m happy to edit accordingly.<p>1: Top US (100->200)
Uber: 72
Palantir: 20
Airbnb: 31
Dropbox: 7
Pinterest: 12
SpaceX: 30.5<p>Total: 172.5<p>2: Mid-Stage (9->27)
Stripe: 20
Zenefits: 2
Instacart: 7.6
Mixpanel: 0.865
Teespring: 0
Optimizely: 0.386
Coinbase:- 8
Docker: >1.3
Weebly: 0.365<p>Total: 40.516<p>3: YC Winter 2015 (0->3)
GitLab: 1.1
Equipment Share: Somewhere between 0.2-0.6 (based on neighboring companies on YC list)
Atomwise: 0.1-0.2 (based on Scribd valuation on YC list)
Razorpay: 0.1-0.2
Qventus: 0.1-0.2
GrubMarket: 0.1-0.2<p>Total: 1.7-2.5