
There are now 229 unicorn startups, with $175B in funding and $1.3T valuation - prostoalex
http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/18/there-are-now-229-unicorn-startups-with-175b-in-funding-and-1-3b-valuation/
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johnloeber
Look at the bottom-right of the infographic: the social networking apps.
Facebook and LinkedIn are no longer unicorn startups: they are mature
companies with a substantial presence on the stock market. Instagram is owned
by Facebook, so why list it as a separate unicorn? That's double-counting the
valuation of Instagram. Same for WhatsApp. In the "Big Data" section, there is
Palantir. Palantir hasn't been a startup for several years now.

This infographic is garbage.

The rest of the article is an eye-rollingly superficial summary of irrelevant
statistics. "6 years: the median time to become a unicorn". That's not a
reflection on unicorns, that's a reflection on the technology market over the
past decade.

~~~
acqq
Their definition: every company _younger than 25 years_ valued over 1 billion
(?)

tristanj in this discussion linked to the document where they state that.

(On completely tangential side, and as a good comparison when speaking about
wealth creation, Mike Bloomberg seems to recently got personally 11 billion
richer in one and half years, if Forbes is to be believed, even if his company
isn't public and is more than 30 years old, so I'm really curious how.)

~~~
rgbrenner
If that's their definition... then where is Google? They're worth $500B, yet
they aren't in the list.

So not only do they have this ridiculous definition, but they can't even
follow their own rules.

Edit: Yahoo, Ebay, Amazon, Netflix, PayPal also qualify. Also excluded.

They should add these.. it'll make for a better click-bait headline. That's
$1T in additional value right there.

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tristanj
Since the images in the article are rather small, I found the original
document (linked at bottom) and scaled up some of the more interesting charts.
They're assuming companies that IPOed in the last few years are still
considered "Unicorns", which I find rather questionable. Anyway, it is quite
nice to see all these companies in one place so here's the all the interesting
charts:

The unicorn club
[http://i.imgur.com/UCXLaYY.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/UCXLaYY.jpg)

New unicorns of 2015
[http://i.imgur.com/JnDuOgj.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/JnDuOgj.jpg)

21 decacorns [http://i.imgur.com/NPLpYDd.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/NPLpYDd.jpg)

13 European unicorns
[http://i.imgur.com/FZd02hD.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/FZd02hD.jpg)

33 Chinese unicorns
[http://i.imgur.com/aaSOJAT.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/aaSOJAT.jpg)

And finally the original document (PDF)
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxFGUJc2Cr8rb3hFUVZ2Nk45QzQ...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxFGUJc2Cr8rb3hFUVZ2Nk45QzQ/edit)

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philippecases
Hi my name is Philippe Cases and I am the CEO of Spoke Software who published
the landscape and Ebooks on which John Koetsier based his article. The goal of
our EBook and of John Koetsier’s article is to give some numbers around this
Unicorn phenomenon and show a long-term perspective. Reading through the
comments, I would like to point out few things: 1) A unicorn is a company that
reached the US$ 1 Billion mark from a private transaction. We went back until
2000 to identify all the unicorns we could, independently of what status they
are now. We may have missed some but the goal was to identify when, where
geographically and where in the technology landscape, unicorns appeared; 2)
About 25% of the companies that have the Unicorn Status have been either
acquired or went public so they are technically beyond the unicorn stage but
we still want to know what they will become and it is important to identify
that they were unicorns at one point. 3) We also want to know which unicorns
got sold below market like Gilt or Fab and which company is going under and we
also want to track companies like Facebook or Alibaba who are now worth
several US$ 100 billion. 4) Facebook, Zalando and LinkedIn did receive US$
1Billion dollar valuation while private. Palantir is a Decacorn as well.
Skyscanner is now a unicorn but we only saw a press announcement of this
status in 1/2016; 5) We don’t expect to be fully exhaustive at this point and
people have pointed 14 unicorns that we hadn’t identified and we are in the
process of adding them to the landscape. SpaceX is part of the landscape
already and we are checking for Tesla. Google never reached the US$ 1 Billion
valuation while private so isn’t part of the unicorn. I hope this helps and
let me know if you have any questions. I would be happy to answer.

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gregdoesit
This article is full of incorrect data: Etsy and Groupon are already public.
Instagram, Whatsapp acquired by Facebook, Yammer by Microsoft.

The industry definition of a unicorn: a non public company, that took less
then 10 years to have a market value of over $1B. Which is why - ironically -
the company I work at, Skyscanner is never listed as a unicorn on any of these
lists. This is because it took them 11 years to reach the >$1B valuation mark.

Disappointed with the quality of this Venturebeat article.

~~~
andre_m
I agree with you! Zalando went public in October 2014. Hudson’s Bay has agreed
to acquire Gilt Groupe for $250 million in cash. PCH International acquired
Fab for an undisclosed sum...

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meirelles
For reference the market cap of all US publicly traded companies is about $19T
[1]. Including names like Apple, Google, Amazon... Still funny name as
"startup" those $1.3T companies.

[1] [http://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-the-map-of-the-
world-...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-the-map-of-the-world-if-
size-was-determined-by-market-cap-2015-08-12)

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Artemis2
Wouldn't Tesla and SpaceX count as decacorns? This infographic is
infuriatingly low-res, so I can't even tell if they're here.

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WeaselNo7
Higher resolution images on that page would be nice. So we can actually see
who the unicorns are!

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isabelrotton
CA is the best nurturer in the world!They provide the best culture and
atmosphere. In my country (Singapore), people are less willing to think out of
the box. A lot of citizens obey the old rules. This slower the pace of
innovation in my country. I hope people can see the possibility of finding new
solutions!

