A Growing List of Unicorns Haven't Raised Funding for 3-Plus Years

ZIRP is over and startups are back to hard mode

> In 2021 and the first half of 2022 (when most of the 2022 activity happened) we essentially crammed 5 years worth of funding into an 18 month period. Series Bs and Cs were raised when companies were at the typical Series A milestones. Normal round sizes doubled or tripled. Every type of investor was broadly operating in a “risk on” mindset given the ZIRP environment, and the venture capital ecosystem was no exception.

From https://cloudedjudgement.substack.com/p/clouded-judgement-11...

The first company on that list, Invision, announced they are shutting down entirely.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38869127

Company execs don't want to raise money at today's lower valuations, because it signals desperation and hurts employee morale. Execs would rather borrow money in the form of "bridge financing." Many execs are crossing their fingers that valuations will go back to previous levels soon enough.

VC execs don't want their portfolio companies to raise money at today's lower valuations, because it would require portfolio write-downs, impacting fund returns, and making it harder to raise new funds. VCs must raise new funds regularly to stay in business.

LPs that invest in VC funds, like college endowments and pension plans, don't want fund portfolio companies companies to raise money at today's lower valuations, because it would require write-downs, impacting their reported performance.

A (near) meaningless fact. What we don't know is how close to profitability any of them are.

> So how much more runway do these onetime unicorns have ahead?

Is mentioned but unanswered, save for an analysis that most don't go past 4 years without a funding round.

Amazing so they are all now profitable and no longer require outside investment. Nice.