Either "Games aren't real software", "If it's not in the US, we mostly don't care" or "Real Unicorns take VC and get acquired by Facebook, Microsoft acquisitions don't count".
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?
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?
A 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...
Yes, 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.
If 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.
I guess in a world where jet.com and Slack exist, it's easy to see many of these as "slow" growth. Avast has been 56% annualized growth over 2008-2014. Getting these valuations typically takes high $X0mil revenue or more, meaning most of them over a 7 year period of annualizing their growth at 50%+. 50%+ growth is pretty impressive, and I don't think there are many people who would think of that as "slow" or "patient".
Does 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.
Yes, 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.
I 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?"
Crazy 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.
Prior 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....
33 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 89.2 ms ] threadLet's face it, for instance, Avast? Seriously who came up with that insane valuation for a company like Avast?
I wonder why Mojang is not on the list, though.
Pick your poison.
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?
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?
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.
Also, while Avast grew into a billion-dollar company via a very rapid growth spurt it took them 20 years to get to the start of that spurt.
http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html
Either validate: - innovative business model
- product
- market
- ...
It usually boils down to businesses that still didn't find a repeatable growth channel (that scales).
[1] http://qz.com/300825/how-fab-com-went-from-a-1-billion-valua...
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.