from Hacker News

Unicorns Seemingly Reach a Tipping Point

by adidash on 2/14/16, 5:53 PM with 55 comments

• by gregdoesit on 2/14/16, 9:04 PM

  I work at a unicorn company... that is technically not a unicorn, and not listed on most of the unicorn lists. For most of these lists the companies considered unicorns are ones that have a valuation of over $1B and it took less then 10 years for the company to get there.

  The company I work at took... 11 years to get to this valuation, so it's not on the list. It took this long because there were very few investment rounds, as the company has been profitable from year 3 onwards.

  I am pretty amused at how it's only the valuation that counts to be a unicorn - for example there are some companies who took $300M in investment, are burning really heavy cash, and have the $1B valuation since the last, $200M round. The media covers these companies much more extensively then they have ever covered us, or similar companies who are doing well and just don't take further investment. Just looknig at the financial structure, cash flow and market saturation, there are good unicorns, bad unicors and then the ones in between.

  Before joining any company, unicorn or not, just do your due diligence. All companies will tell you how insanely much the options will be worth assuming the 50% annual growth the next 5 years, and winning big in the market. But a share or option is only a promise, and it's only as good as the company, the team, the founders - and the economy.

• by hemancuso on 2/14/16, 6:54 PM

  I'd be curious to know what percentage of founders are taking money off the table during these rounds. For as many of these articles that I read I don't see much about that. De-risking their personal stake by 3-10M could be a motivating force in these high valuation rounds but I don't see evidence either way. Because on its face these unicorn rounds seem to increase risk rather than reduce it in a few dimensions.

• by sbardle on 2/14/16, 7:54 PM

  The unicorn phenomenon is the result of hot money looking for any kind of return in a zombified financial system. Tech has had a good run the last ten years but things like QE have contributed to turning the sector into something of an asset bubble. But will it be allowed to burst? I'm not so sure. The central banks now have a vested interest in keeping these bubbles (whether in real estate or stocks) going for as long as possible. A few more rounds of QE and Twitter and LinkedIn might be back up in the clouds again.

• by gexla on 2/15/16, 1:23 AM

  Unicorn tipping. Like cow tipping, but way more challenging.

  Jumping into the article...

  > the media has been almost singularly obsessed with companies valued at north of a billion dollars

  Wow, Techcrunch. That's the pot calling the kettle black. Don't you think?

  Markets create zig-zaggy lines. Media will be there to report on every zig-zag. We'll waste our time reading these articles thinking they are important.

• by gue5t on 2/14/16, 7:10 PM

  It seems obvious that tricorns are a much more stable design.

• by Ftuuky on 2/14/16, 7:41 PM

  I don't know who invented the term 'unicorn' but it's getting increasingly more ironic.

• by liquidise on 2/14/16, 8:36 PM

  > if he couldn’t get a billion-dollar valuation straightaway for his company, he wouldn’t raise capital at all, saying the valuation was a “psychological threshold” for “certain types of customers”

  In psychology, this is referred to as Projection.

• by cavisne on 2/14/16, 9:16 PM

  So, I'm dubious about anyones ability to actually see a tipping point in advance, but if this is the case how do software engineers (as opposed to founders etc) protect themselves?

• by fallingfrog on 2/15/16, 1:39 PM

  "Unicorns reach a tipping point" is one of those phrases that are going to give future historians work to do.. Did 21st century people believe in unicorns? Was unicorn tipping like cow tipping?

• by neonbat on 2/14/16, 10:34 PM

  Does anyone else think this title is ridiculous?

• by crsmithdev on 2/14/16, 7:40 PM

  ...just months after TC seemingly can't run itself out of breath highlighting and hyping up all these same companies enough. Constant fanfare or doom, all hyperbole, nothing in between or representative of reality which is somewhere in the far less exciting middle.