The Next Wave of ‘Unicorn’ Startups | Hacker News Reader

The Next Wave of ‘Unicorn’ Startups

nytimes.com

111 pointsrm288948 comments

I didn't knew the meaning of "unicorn" when applied to companies. Maybe I'm the only person who still hadn't, but if there are others - to save them a search query:

"A unicorn is a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicorn_(finance)

Yeah I'd say the majority of people here know what a unicorn is.

The parent is one of “today’s lucky 10,000”

https://xkcd.com/1053/

Not to be rude but you're aware that YCombinator (the website you're browsing on) is a startup incubator, right?

Thank you. Suddenly last year many people repeated the phrase 'unicorn X', and I didn't know the meaning until today because it looks like a marketing buzzword and I just rolled my eyes and moved on.

"Wow, 11 of these 50 were funded by Y Combinator:" - Paul Graham via Twitter - worth a read of that thread in which PG also notes that he has had nothing to do w/class selection since 2014:

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1095075300852019201

That makes it sound like a PR piece.

*submarine

Made me wonder how likely it was that "Funded by YC" was one of the criteria used by the analyst to come up with the list.

It has to be. Many people know how to write software, only few get ongoing advice from the industry's top advisors and have a line out the door to fund them. King-making is a thing, even if only a partial thing.

Relevant PG essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

That's like Warren Buffet saying "wow, look how so many of the stocks Berkshire Hathaway invested in shot up in value right after investing."

The fact that y combinator invests in a company automatically gives them a leg up in raising tons of money at higher than normal valuations.

The online pharmacy (Alto Pharmacy) and online doctor (KRY) are the ones that sound like they could be unicorns, but they are going against entrenched interests.

Uber took on cab drivers and won. Doctors and pharmacists have much stronger quasi-unions (the AMA and AphA).

Kry has already won in Sweden. The resistance is dead.

Earnin is a scam that disproportionately targets young poor black/latino people. It's JG Wentworth in an app. Doesn't count as a unicorn because it's not innovative at all.

Wow. That app is creepy. It tracks your location so it knows when you got to work and left work. It tracks your bank account so it knows when, how often and how much you deposit. Etc.

Why is it a scam? Seems better than a payday loan if receiving paychecks daily instead of biweekly makes the difference

Some creepy tracking, but curious why you think it’s a scam? I understand how payday lenders can be considered scams, but it seems like Earnin makes all the fees optional.

I haven’t used the app, just read their marketing pages, BTW so I may have missed something.

"optional fees" doesn't sound very legitimate to me

That just means there's a tip functionality.

They're undercutting loan sharks and overdraft fees by a huge percent. I wouldn't be sad to see those go.

The payday lending industry operates within an intrinsically challenging ethical landscape. Their customers are generally poor, often desperate, and proportionately vulnerable. But payday lenders also don't operate within a vacuum: often the costs of high-interest-rate loans are dwarfed by comparison to the late-payment fees charged by credit cards, landlords, insurance companies, doctors offices, auto lenders, bank overdrafts, etc... As the saying goes, it's expensive to be poor. In one survey of payday loan customers performed by GWU Business School, 89% of borrowers said they were "very satisfied" or "somewhat satisfied" with their most recent payday loan. [1] No one wants to be in that situation, but for some, payday loans are the best or only option.

It's one thing to call out the kind of deliberately predatory behavior that has thrived in the payday lending industry, but it seems like Earnin is earnestly trying to provide a service that many Americans outside (and inside) the Bay Area fall back on, in the fairest and least-predatory way possible. As far as I'm concerned, that's something to be applauded, not scorned.

[1] https://reason.org/wp-content/uploads/files/payday_lending_r...

Payday lenders don't operate within a vacuum but people would still be better off if they didn't operate at all:

https://www.responsiblelending.org/sites/default/files/nodes...

Speak for yourself. A payday loan was the only thing that bailed me out from missing rent and getting evicted.

Payday loans are a lot less predatory than every major bank credit card. They at least ensure you have money to pay them back.

The study showed that people showed a strong tendency to tap other options where payday operators weren't available and ended up financially better off overall.

Demographics:

21 in California (16 in San Fran)

11 in APAC

9 on the East Coast (including MapBox)

3 in Europe

3 in S. America

3 in "other US"

Mapbox is also in sf, with most of the company leadership based there (I used to work there)

Why did you leave?

Seems like the linked article is more an analysis / summary and doesn't actually have the list, which is in this linked article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/10/technology/these-50-start...

Did they rejigger things since the submission?

They site a lot of stuff from cbinsights. I don't know about others but I find cbinsights analysis a bit sloppy sometimes. They kept crowing about the potentials blockchain and how it was the future all through the crash as though it wasn't even taking place. They also had this piece about we work which painted them in glowing colors right in the aftermath of the additional funding from softbank not coming through, giving fluffy reasons why they think their still going to continue to upend the industry. Plus all their emails end with "I love you" which is getting old and annoying. Not intentionally smashing them but just making the point that aside from the numeric data they collect on startups which is pretty cool, I'm skeptical about using their analysis pieces as a proper source

It looks like the list and the commentary are on separate pages:

List: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/10/technology/these-50-start...

Commentary: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/10/technology/new-wave-unico...

They should describe how they came up with this list. For example, Alto pharmacy, which appears to primarily operate in California, is on the list. They raised $50 million last December. Capsule pharmacy, which essentially does the same thing, primarily operates out of NYC. They also raised $50 million a few months earlier, in August 2018, but are not on this list. Wonder why?

Amount of funding != value of company

A funding round is for X% of a company at $Y dollars, which values the company at $ ((100 / X) * Y).

Looking at two recent announcements that I follow, Aurora raised $530mm at $2.5b valuation and Nuro raised $940mm valued at $2.7b. Aurora sold ~21% ownership, and Nuro sold ~34% ownership, but both ended up around the same valuation.

I realize that, and I don’t have the valuation numbers for either company, presumably CB Insights does. But using the example you gave, if there were a list of companies entering the 3 billion valuation, business fundamentals aside, I’d be hard pressed to pick between Aurora and Nuro.

Honestly haven't heard of any of those potential unicorns (except Zola), but I guess that is sort of the point!

This list looks positively anemic. How is this anything but a business insider esque PR puff piece?

I'm not sure how up to date the wiki unicorn list is, but for those interested:

China (131) U.S. (85) India (20)

----

Some of those listed will likely fall-off in the near future (e.g. Ofo).

Mapbox, Check, Marqeta, and Segment are basically already unicorns. Wouldn't be surprised to see them IPO in the next 3 years.

No Paywall: https://outline.com/qp6P8w

Despite predictions to the contrary, San Francisco (and Bay Area) continues to kill it when it comes to unicorn production

Who predicted the contrary?

No one really. I believe the GP comment is confusing that with sentiment against SF costs and culture, as well as sentiment against the value of unicorns in general.

how about the economist? I wouldn't say 'predict', but definitely painting a negative portrait

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/08/30/why-startups-ar...

An alternative hypothesis would be that who you know/ access matters more than good ideas.

That's not an alternative hypothesis. It's a possible mechanism. Note that both can be true at the same time.

Probably more because there's access to capital than anything magic in the water

Isn't that essentially the magic in the water?

I've watched several UK startups try and get funding without going to SV and it is painful to watch how utterly amateur and pathetic trying to get startup or VC capital is in the UK.

it's a solveable problem though. SV has a whole mythos but it basically boils down to easy access to piles of money.

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