Adyen

Adyen is a global payment company that allows businesses to accept e-commerce, mobile, and point-of-sale payments. Adyen has more than 3,500 customers and is listed on the stock exchange Euronext. 

At some point in the recent past, Pieter van der Does stopped caring that name recognition for Adyen, his 11-year-old Amsterdam-based company, is essentially zilch. “We [have taken] it on as a badge of honor: Adyen, the unknown unicorn,” he says. Unknown, perhaps, but quietly widespread nonetheless. Adyen acts as a middleman with its payment-processing platform, used by virtually all of the internet giants, including Facebook, Uber, Netflix and Spotify. It processed $90 billion in transactions last year and booked $727 million in revenue, almost doubling sales in a year. While its clients in the past might’ve needed several different services to handle payments, Adyen completes the entire process itself, streamlining it and improving conversion rates.