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February 9, 2022 08:06 pm

There Are Now 1,000 Unicorn Startups Worth $1 Billion or More

Almost a decade after the term "unicorn" was coined to describe a rare breed of private company, about two new companies are joining the herd daily. From a report: The term unicorn emerged almost a decade ago, a time when startups worth $1 billion were rare and treasured, something only the luckiest of founders and investors would ever glimpse with their own eyes. Now the production of unicorns is reaching the scale of industrial agriculture. Productboard [an anecdote in the story] was particularly notable in one way, though: It became the 1,000th unicorn, marking the first time the herd has crossed into four digits, according to startup-tracking service CB Insights. That same week, six other companies became unicorns. On the day of Productboard's internal announcement, Dune Analytics, a Norwegian crypto analytics startup, gained its horn by raising a cheeky $69,420,000. In January, 42 startups became unicorns and four became "decacorns" -- the clumsy nickname given to startups worth $10 billion or more. "When you have 1,000 unicorns," says Brian Lee, who oversees research at CB Insights, "that's almost an oxymoron." It's hard not to see the number of billion-dollar startups as proof that the private markets are overheated -- something people have been saying for years. Even in the face of volatile public markets, inflation, and rising interest rates, the mood among private market investors appears to be as ebullient as ever. Some of that undaunted growth is valid, says Lee: As more of the world's services become digital, software companies become more valuable, and infrastructure such as Amazon Web Services makes it easier than ever to start a tech business. In the past, companies the size of the most valuable unicorns -- ByteDance, SpaceX, and Stripe -- would probably have already gone public. Today entrepreneurs feel less pressure to do so, given how easy it is for them to raise the money they need from private funders. Staying private allows many companies to avoid the additional scrutiny and potential loss of control that comes with an initial public offering. Plenty of investors are eager to get in early on rapidly evolving industries such as crypto, pushing up valuations. "You can't discount the power of FOMO," Lee says. "People are willing to go in with more capital."

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