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businessinsider had a great article on evernote here, "Evernote, the first dead unicorn", which really foreshadowed this: http://www.businessinsider.com.au/ever
by egusa 11y ago
businessinsider had a great article on evernote here, "Evernote, the first dead unicorn", which really foreshadowed this: http://www.businessinsider.com.au/evernote-the-first-dead-unicorn-2015-9 http://www.businessinsider.com.au/evernote-the-first-dead-un...
- greenyoda 11y agoThat article generated a lot of discussion on HN a couple of weeks ago, which can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10218915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10218915 (Note: The BusinessInsider article was a re-publication of the original on syrah.co.)
- joshdickson 11y agothank you for noticing! we are currently back on HN with the Startup L. Jackson post so this was weird timing
- dangero 11y agoI believe Groupon is the first dead Unicorn
- hkmurakami 11y agoGroupon still has a $2.3B market cap. My vote is for Fab, which went from $1B to effectively $0.
- therealarmen 11y agoThe public markets [1] would disagree. [1] https://www.google.com/?q=GRPN https://www.google.com/?q=GRPN
- streblo 11y agoHow are you disagreeing? GRPN is at like 15% of where it opened.
- ChuckMcM 11y agoAs I understand the definition that people have been bandying about, Groupon can't be a dead unicorn because they managed to go public. To be a Unicorn you have to be a privately held and venture backed company with a valuation (from your investors) of over $1B.) While GroupOn went public, and continues to this day, just as Zynga did.
- xiaoma 11y agoGroupon is still worth a couple of billion despite the beating it's taken from investors. Its revenue and EBITDA have consistently climbed in each year since going public, and there is plenty of cash on hand without a single cent of debt. As usual, the Motley Fool's analysis is excellent: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/04/07/bull-vs-bear-groupon-inc-stock.aspx http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/04/07/bull-vs-bea...
- defen 11y agoGRPN is down nearly 46% since that was written...
- xiaoma 11y agoThat makes the bull side of the argument significantly stronger, especially given that N. American gross billings are up 12% year-over-year in the last quarter. I have no financial position either way, and I'm not claiming everything is rosy for GRPN but it's very far from being a "dead unicorn" and at least by my analysis the stock is pretty undervalued at the moment.
- tedunangst 11y agoThe lower the stock drops the more it will rocket up!
- draw_down 11y agoThe Motley Fool does seem to think that way sometimes.
- dasil003 11y agoGroupon's problem is with repeat business. I think they're still churning through naive businesses that don't understand the value proposition. If they can't get repeat customers then their upside is limited. I would be very wary of judging Groupon based purely on historic cashflow.
- cyberpanther 11y agoMy prediction, the next dead unicorn: Dropbox They are similar in that they haven't made anything note worthy in a while and their main product is really just a feature of bigger companies apps and services.
- trollian 11y agoMy favourite question to ask of start-ups: "have you built a product or a feature?"
- cristianpascu 11y agoIs it Steve Jobs that told dropbox founders this?
- cyberpanther 11y agoBuilding a feature is fine but that means you need to sell out then at some point or grow into new areas. Dropbox is not doing to good at moving into new areas and they are probably too big now to sell out easily.
- benjiweber 11y agoWhat about "Have you built a business or a product?"
- tajano 11y agoAnother prediction: Twitter. 2k+ engineers on staff without notable improvements to the core user-facing product in a while. Declining signups, declining engagement. Nobody stepping into the permanent CEO role. I don't see how this ends well.
- robryan 11y agoTwitter isn't going anywhere, it just might not fulfil the high expectations of the later stage/ public investors. Worst case for Twitter is probably a massive acquisition by Facebook/Google/Microsoft.
- 11y ago
- CamperBob2 11y agoThat unicorn looks more like an elephant, but I'm no expert.