Among the enterprise Disruptors on the inaugural CNBC Disruptor50 list are companies likely to become the next big IPOs. There's potential for Salesforce.com-like momentum stock juggernauts, too. And, these disruptors may be takeout candidates for companies dominating today's software and cloud markets, hoping to disrupt the Disruptors, even at a hefty acquisition price tag.
These enterprise Disruptors are also approaching the market using some of the trends in vogue across all sectors in funneling venture dollars to the brightest bulbs. Collaboration as a business model isn't just for 3-D printing and drone geeks or those on Quirky's product creation platform, but for the software whizzes within corporations targeted by the services of Atlassian. That $10,000 credit card "initial round of funding" has led to more than $100 million in revenue across 22,000 clients.
The socially conscious streak embedded in Silicon Valley's capitalist ethos is clearly seen in the Big Data aspirations of Palantir Technologies, which helped in the hunt for Osama and wants to find the next Bernard Madoff as well as stop human, weapons, and drug trafficking, and child pornography. Or as Palantir describes its business, without a hint of modesty, "Helping to solve the world's biggest problems."
There's plenty of money to be made in the Palantir model—the company expects a business that generates billions in annual revenue—but there is also a huge opportunity in helping you and me store and share all the photos and music that we can't live without. In the case of one Disruptor, 100 million storage-compulsive individuals across 200 countries.
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Box CEO Aaron Levie told CNBC that disruptors like Box are "making legacy solutions less relevant," while offering a value proposition that ensures their long-term survival. With more than 15 million users across 150,000 companies and serving the needs of Netflix, Sony Music, Gap and Random House, Box is clearly doing something right in tackling the cloud phenomenon, targeting the collaboration trend, and challenging companies from SAP to Salesforce.com and from Google to Amazon.
The jury is still out on whether these disruptions are built to last. Will taking their big paydays and becoming part of the takeouts made by technology giants be the proof of their disruptive potential?
