
The Unicorn Club 2015: Learning from Billion-Dollar Companies - kevin_morrill
http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/18/welcome-to-the-unicorn-club-2015-learning-from-billion-dollar-companies/
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programminggeek
"There’s still too little diversity at the top" is such a stupid statement
given the fact that you are talking about "unicorns", some 0.14% of VC backed
companies get to a billion dollars.

By that very definition of "normal" shouldn't really apply should it? These
companies and their circumstances are rare. So, you're talking about outliers.

Also, it conflates two very different issues. Performance and diversity.
Obviously women can lead and do a fantastic job at top level positions. But,
these companies weren't built with or by women at the top.

It's like talking about the fastest people to run 100m sprint, and then
complaining that there isn't enough diversity at the top. The fact is, there
are hundreds of men who have broke 10 seconds in the sprint, and the fastest
female sprint was 10.49 in 1989. Usain Bolt is almost a full second faster
than that.

Performance and diversity are vastly different things.

Hopefully more unicorn companies are built by women going forward, but it
seems odd to complain that there isn't more diversity in a group that is
defined by business value as the only metric.

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falsestprophet
A unicorn is a billion dollar company. Shall we just call them billion dollar
companies then?

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minimaxir
Because it's quirky and modern SV startups are all about being quirky.

No sarcasm.

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theseatoms
Yeah, it's just a fantastical term that the media's latched onto,
unfortunately.

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pquerna
Something I've been thinking about:

> A perception of winner-take-all markets

> Enterprise-oriented companies raise much less private capital;

> The average enterprise-oriented company (where the primary customer is a
> business) is worth $2.5 billion, less than half the average consumer
> company.

The enterprise space doesn't seem to be following the winner-take-all
mentality as compared to consumer startups. At some point you are still hiring
regionalized enterprise sales reps, and each of them can only have so much
quota.

Is there a enterprise-unicorn where they don't have traditional-enterprise-
sales? Where their distribution/acquisition closely follows consumer
companies?

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herval
I believe Slack is an enterprise unicorn? So is Atlassian (I hear they also
don't follow the usual traditional sales process)

~~~
pquerna
[https://www.atlassian.com/licensing/purchase-
licensing](https://www.atlassian.com/licensing/purchase-licensing)

Atlassian probably fits the bill more and has proven revenue on it, while
Slack is more... "SaaS" in my mind, and really hasn't proven long term revenue
traction yet, though it is certainly looking good for them.

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onuryavuz
Negative correlation between NASDAQ and number of unicorns founded in the
corresponding year seems really interesting. Any deep thoughts on this ?

> The best times to start a unicorn company could be a) post the launch of a
> watershed new tech platform; and b) during a prolonged public market
> downturn. Without many great jobs available, the reduced opportunity cost
> and related hardship may spawn great innovation and grit.

~~~
onuryavuz
On a second thought I can come up with 1) the rise of an unusually high number
of billion dollar companies may signal an impending market correction and 2),
a low number of billion dollar companies are founded during times of market
over-exuberance.

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CyberDildonics
I would rather read half a page from 100 smart people that failed.

~~~
jacquesc
I think both sides are worth exploring. If you haven't seen it yet, check out
[http://autopsy.io/](http://autopsy.io/)

~~~
wamatt
While there may be some value in dissecting failed startups, are both sides
are equally illuminating?

Thinking of the possibility space, it seems to me, there exists more ways to
fail, than to succeed.

On the other hand, some people suggest in order to win, know what actions lead
to failure, and avoid doing those.

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davidu
I think her points are all generally true, but be aware...

Some of the companies on that list are not actually unicorns. Meaning: they
have not consummated a financing with a post-money valuation that exceeds
$1,000,000,000.

Just saying that her data (or at least a small part of it that I know about
intimately) is wrong.

