These 15 startups didn't exist 5 years ago — now they're worth billions

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Silicon Valley can create immense value in just a short time. Just look at these 15 startups that didn't even exist five years ago, which are now valued at $1 billion or more, according to venture capitalists. 

For the purposes of this list, Business Insider asked PitchBook Data to pull a list of US-based companies that were founded in 2012 or later — since we're nearing the end of 2016 — and that are private tech companies with a valuation of north of $1 billion. 

We then ranked them from least to most valuable based on their post-money valuations.

Here are the companies that achieved billion-dollar valuations in the last five years:

Cylance

Founded: 2012

Valuation: $1 billion

Cylance built a product that uses artificial intelligence to analyze a file you're about to open, determine if it's malware, and then stop it from executing — all in less than a second. It solves the problem of email phishing scams, which are still a favorite method of hackers, and has over 1,000 customers, it says.

Cylance was founded by Stuart McClure and Ryan Permeh, two well-known names in security who are perhaps best known for their work at McAfee.

Compass

Founded: 2012

Valuation: $1 billion

While Compass functions like a traditional broker, the company's promise is using technology to reduce the time and friction of buying and selling a house or apartment. In July, Compass released an app designed to replace "stale" quarterly market reports with more dynamic information. In the app, buyers and sellers can search by standard things like neighborhood, number of bedrooms, price range, and so on. But they can also look at more advanced metrics, like year-over-year analysis of median price per square foot, days on the market, and negotiability.

Illumio

Founded: 2013

Valuation: $1 billion

In 2014, Illumio emerged from stealth. Six months later, it had already racked up a billion dollar valuation, thanks to its new approach to security.  The idea involves watching the applications themselves to make sure they aren't doing anything they are not supposed to do, indicating a hacker or a virus. It places a tiny bit of code (called an agent) on every computer and operating system to watch all the apps. Companies can then install the software that watches the apps in their own data center, or they can hire Illumio's cloud service to watch the apps for them. And then the security follows the app wherever it goes, even if an app moves from one server to another, or from the data center to a cloud computing service.