Presto Wins Spot on Y Combinator’s Top Companies List – 2019
Y Combinator—the largest startup accelerator in the world—first published their list of the top companies that went through the accelerator in October 2018, as sorted by valuation. They recently updated their website with a 2019 edition of the top 101 companies.
While Y Combinator recognizes that “valuation is a poor way to measure a company’s value in the short term,” they updated their list again as a way to introduce their top companies to potential employees, partners, and late stage investors. Y Combinator even notes: “We have a number of impressive companies who would appear on the list or rank even higher if we counted other metrics (revenue, revenue/employee, secondary valuation, etc).” The companies are each valued at $150 million or more, and were chosen among over 2000 YC companies, worth a combined valuation of over $100 billion.
Presto is part of the 51% of the list that makes up the B2B Software and Services sector among 11 other categories. Presto is listed as rank #65 by valuation, and described as “the leading provider of enterprise SaaS solutions for restaurants.”
Presto—then primarily known by its legal name as E la Carte—was accepted into the Y Combinator accelerator program in June 2010, and was a graduate of the summer 2010 batch. The Silicon Valley based accelerator program works intensively with a batch of startups for 3 months each summer, providing them seed funding and mentorship. Following E la Carte’s graduation from the program, their first tablet launched on the market in April 2011, eventually leading to their groundbreaking deal with Applebee’s in 2013 to install their first 100,000 tablets. E la Carte rebranded as Presto in February 2018.