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Source: CB Insights
The Increasingly Crowded Unicorn Club
November 2, 2015 2:30pm by Barry Ritholtz
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In 2000, most companies like this turned out to be actual mythical unicorns. Only a few became horses, i,e, real animals. It will be interesting to see what real:mythical ratio this financing round will have.
I think this means that the next tech crash won’t involve the general public, just the genius ‘insiders’.
One big difference from 2000 is that a lot of these companies have actual businesses and growing revenues — they aren’t just being measured on “eyeballs” or other dubious metrics that were popular then. Several of the “enterprise focused” companies will do well, I think — Nutanix, Apttus, Coupa, Stripe, Zenefits. Others that are more focused on consumers might do pretty well, but the valuations may be a stretch — Warby Parker, Prosper.
Theranos — looks like that one is heading to the bottom of the bowl.
Docusign feels like a feature to me, not a company. There are still quite a few that look like Amazon/Google et al could put out of business. Zomato — what the heck is that? A restaurant finder? Instacart? Andreesen Horowitz invested in Instacart, and those folks are all super smart, but I don’t get that one — except as possibly an acquisition target for AMZN or GOOG.
Watch out for Shazam — I don’t really understand how they’re going to make money, but they seem to be some smart mofos ;-)
Jan 2014 seems to be a good dividing line. I recognize most of the companies on the left and almost none on the right. Even without knowing anything, I’d bet that in five years 10% of the companies on the right will either be out of business or, if public, not worth their current valuation.