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The Speed of a Unicorn
- amelius 11y agoIt would be nice to see the same graph from parallel universes, to determine which of these companies became unicorns by mere luck.
- jedmeyers 11y agoLuck is necessary, but not sufficient condition for becoming a successful company.
- jbmorgado 11y agoIt's quite scary to see so many names I've never even heard about before, and then to see some names that clearly make no sense also there. Let's face it, for instance, Avast? Seriously who came up with that insane valuation for a company like Avast?
- js8 11y agoAFAIK Avast is betting on monetizing anti-virus usage data. I wonder why Mojang is not on the list, though.
- eterm 11y agoThis list is quite confusing. What defines "start-up"? Take go-pro, they're a product company that had huge success with a hit product. They successfully re-invested to keep that product business successful and the business grew to 1bn. Does unicorn just mean non-publically traded company worth > 1bn?
- saganus 11y agoThis. How is it that Avast is still a "startup" when it was founded in 1988? I mean.. they were founded even before the dot com bubble! Edit: I know there's always a problem when trying to define what is and isn't a startup...but by all metrics I could think, Avast isn't one of them. I mean, otherwise we would also need to include the likes of Microsoft, Oracle, Google, Amazon as other unicorn startups, no?
- anovikov 11y agoA unicorn is a company that has reached 1bn valuation while staying private. So Microsoft, Oracle, Google and Amazon don't qualify (while Google definitely was one for some time, it's just that the term didn't exist back then). Of course it also puts PwC and Bechtel in this league...
- trjordan 11y agoYes, that's the definition of unicorn. There's companies like Avast on here because they stayed private for a long time before hitting the gas and getting to that. Because of the way the equity markets have been recently, there's not a clear path to becoming a unicorn without hitting most of the other markets we tend to think of as startup-y: VC-backed, high growth, scalable into a big market.
- vonmoltke 11y agoIf that is the case, there are a few dozen "unicorns" that never had a "hit the gas" period and just grew slowly into billion-dollar companies over decades. I don't see any reason that is not a clear and viable path today, if you have the patience.
- tschellenbach 11y agoBuilding a business is hard. Really respect the achievement of these companies.
- dk8996 11y agoVery nice work but it seems like some companies are not in the right category. Like Zenefits is in Fintech category.
- grabcocque 11y agoDoes nobody seem bothered by the fact that "valuation" is usually bulshytt?
- trjordan 11y agoYou can fudge it, probably 2-3x, with liquidation, but a $300mil actual valuation is nothing to sneeze at.
- ovi256 11y agoEverybody knows it's bullshit, but what else are you going to do quantitative studies on ? Number of Facebook likes ?
- randomname2 11y agofab.com (included in the list as once having a 1B valuation) was sold in a $15M fire sale [1], which does make one wonder.. [1] http://qz.com/300825/how-fab-com-went-from-a-1-billion-valuation-to-a-15-million-fire-sale/ http://qz.com/300825/how-fab-com-went-from-a-1-billion-valua...
- seibelj 11y agoDoes anyone know anybody who has ever ordered something from jet.com? No one I've asked has ever heard of it, and they did an enormous media blitz in Boston.
- burkaman 11y agoYeah I've seen tons of ads, never heard anybody talk about it. The few items I looked at were all more expensive than Amazon.
- vthallam 11y agoI have ordered a couple of times, the prices were slightly cheaper than Amazon and the delivery was prompt.
- Scramblejams 11y agoYes, they had an unheard of deal on Dell 24" monitors, ordered two. Good experience. Wouldn't have heard of them if it hadn't been for my Slickdeals alert, though.
- azylman 11y agoI ordered something from jet.com, was a terrible experience, would not recommend. They apparently decided that my order was fraudulent, cancelled my order, locked my account, _did not tell me and continued to send me marketing spam_. I only found out when I emailed them a few weeks later to ask "what gives?"
- rubiquity 11y agoCrazy thought: If there's so many billion dollar startups now, maybe we shouldn't be referring to them as Unicorns anymore? Taking a term that was used to refer to exceptional businesses and proliferating the use of it makes me even more weary of VC-run companies than I already am.
- ant6n 11y agoBut we have to maintain backwards-compatibility.
- scrumper 11y agoMaybe we should redefine it to only mean those that are profitable.
- impostervt 11y agoWe need something for the > $10 billion club. Hippogriffs?
- shalmanese 11y agodecacorn.
- spoiler 11y agoAt first I thought these were page load times until I read the description. On topicL I am not from the US, and I've never hear of Jet, but so have none of 8 randomly selectedfriends from the US.
- greghendershott 11y agoPrior to an IPO or acquisition, valuations have approximately the precision and accuracy of agile estimates chosen from a drop-down list populated with values from an echo chamber inhabited by....