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> Unicorns are concentrated in a few countries/regions: United States (136), China (120), India (26), UK (15), South Korea (11), Israel (7), Indonesia (6), Sing

> Unicorns are concentrated in a few countries/regions: United States (136), China (120), India (26), UK (15), South Korea (11), Israel (7), Indonesia (6), Singapore (4), Switzerland (4), Hong Kong (4), France (3), Portugal (3), Sweden (3), Australia (2), Belgium (2), Canada (2), Germany (2), Luxembourg (2), Spain (2), Ukraine (2) and ten other countries (1 each) Israel has more than 3x more unicorns than we in Germany that tells one thing or two...

romanoderoma 6y ago
It tells us that Israel have the same industrial military complex that US have Put it in another way: their success is due military application of technology Besides: what does counting unicorns proves? Is Israel GDP per capita higher than Germany? Is Israel richer than Germany? Europe values other metrics more than simply pure market valuation For example WhatsApp only employed 50 engineers when already had 900 million users In Germany, and Europe in general, we prefer businesses that increase the general population employment than pure profit margins EDIT: a few resources about military industrial complex in Israel https://medium.com/@davidsperorn/a-match-made-in-hell-israel-and-the-military-industrial-complex-34c9d76b789c https://medium.com/@davidsperorn/a-match-made-in-hell-israel... https://www.tni.org/es/node/13511 https://www.tni.org/es/node/13511 https://www.jstor.org/stable/174246 https://www.jstor.org/stable/174246 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01402398308437160?journalCode=fjss20 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0140239830843716...
yorwba 6y ago
Using unicorns as a proxy for innovation is maybe not a great idea, because it's just looking at a few outliers of heavily concentrated capital. It doesn't tell you anything about the majority of companies that are not unicorns and will never be, but that might nonetheless be highly innovative and profitable. For example, if you look at foreign direct investment, the Netherlands lead the pack in 2017 with $4.888 trillion invested by residents of other countries. [1] Yet apparently there's only one Dutch unicorn (team.blue). Evidently there's a lot of investment going to other companies instead of betting on a single unicorn. [1] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2198rank.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
dmitriid 6y ago
Among unicorns are: - Uber, whose only innovation is price dumping using infinite investor cache on losing billions of dollars yearly - Facebook, whose only innovation is creating festering echo chambers, siphoning private data wholesale and dodging laws - JUUL, whose only innovation is selling electronic cigarettes - Coinbase, whose only innovation is to be a middleman in bitcoin scams - Magic Leap, whose only innovation is siphoning off investors' money and finally producing a subpar gadget - Pinterest whose only innovation is spam Google search results with stolen pictures etc. There are very few actual innovators among these "unicorns".

romanoderoma 6y ago

It tells us that Israel have the same industrial military complex that US have Put it in another way: their success is due military application of technology Besides: what does counting unicorns proves? Is Israel GDP per capita higher than Germany? Is Israel richer than Germany? Europe values other metrics more than simply pure market valuation For example WhatsApp only employed 50 engineers when already had 900 million users In Germany, and Europe in general, we prefer businesses that increase the general population employment than pure profit margins EDIT: a few resources about military industrial complex in Israel https://medium.com/@davidsperorn/a-match-made-in-hell-israel-and-the-military-industrial-complex-34c9d76b789c https://medium.com/@davidsperorn/a-match-made-in-hell-israel... https://www.tni.org/es/node/13511 https://www.tni.org/es/node/13511 https://www.jstor.org/stable/174246 https://www.jstor.org/stable/174246 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01402398308437160?journalCode=fjss20 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0140239830843716...

yorwba 6y ago

Using unicorns as a proxy for innovation is maybe not a great idea, because it's just looking at a few outliers of heavily concentrated capital. It doesn't tell you anything about the majority of companies that are not unicorns and will never be, but that might nonetheless be highly innovative and profitable. For example, if you look at foreign direct investment, the Netherlands lead the pack in 2017 with $4.888 trillion invested by residents of other countries. [1] Yet apparently there's only one Dutch unicorn (team.blue). Evidently there's a lot of investment going to other companies instead of betting on a single unicorn. [1] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2198rank.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

dmitriid 6y ago

Among unicorns are: - Uber, whose only innovation is price dumping using infinite investor cache on losing billions of dollars yearly - Facebook, whose only innovation is creating festering echo chambers, siphoning private data wholesale and dodging laws - JUUL, whose only innovation is selling electronic cigarettes - Coinbase, whose only innovation is to be a middleman in bitcoin scams - Magic Leap, whose only innovation is siphoning off investors' money and finally producing a subpar gadget - Pinterest whose only innovation is spam Google search results with stolen pictures etc. There are very few actual innovators among these "unicorns".