Unicorn

“So, it takes the average unicorn is private for 10 plus years, typically, and then you got all these follow-on rounds that are happening pretty quickly, one after the other, you see maybe the same logo in five, six different firms, and the question is, how do …”

“We looked at every, I mean, if you look at all the unicorns that were minted in Q-one or Q-two of 25, by the end of Q-two 26, at least 40% of them will have had a subsequent markup.”

“So I think we've had 11.”

“YC now has a lot of data about this, and the startups that go home after YC don't do as well as the ones that stay. Startups that go home back, startups that go back home after YC are only about half as likely to become unicorns”

“40% of unicorns have not raised capital in three plus years.”

“I just worry there's some ratio of potential acquirers divided by unicorns, and I think we're at the lowest ratio of our careers.”

“Every investment I make, I think has the potential of becoming a unicorn or an IPO, but I know from statistics and reality that stuff's going to happen.”

“None of the unicorns are better than Figma, almost none of the prior, and if Figma isn't good enough, it's not good enough.”

“And there's almost a thousand of these unicorns from 20, 21 waiting to possibly never go public.”

“There was something like 20, 24 minted unicorns in Q one. By Q three, 15% of them already had a step up.”

“But at a zoom out level, this is the kind of thing that simply has to happen over and over again In everyone's venture portfolio because we have six, 700 unicorns. We've processed five, 15 out the IPO gate year to date, so 20 for the year. That implies we got …”

“Well, first of all, you know, in, in, in 2012, 80% of the unicorns came out of Silicon Valley. By 20 20, that was down almost to like 20, 25%.”

“It's not going to, you know, it's a start, but it's not going to save 500 to 700 unicorns single handedly, right?”

“My gut would be, it's roughly, 20% will be good enough to get public in the end, 20% will totally, maybe 25 on each site, just for arbitrariness sake, and then 50% in the middle are meaningful enough to be valuable, but not so meaningful that they'll get publi…”

“Honestly, I didn't even notice because it's going to be one of five, 600 of these that's going to have to happen. You know, there's somewhere between 800 and a thousand unicorns and a couple of hundred of them are going to get public and the rest of them are g…”

“One thing we spotted is that the teams that come to San Francisco and then stay in San Francisco or the Bay Area, they actually double their chance of becoming a unicorn.”

“About 40% of the unicorns from the last 10 years in the world were started by multi-time serial founders.”

“Did you know that 40, you know, of those 40%, 60% of those people, the people who created unicorns the last 10 years are YC alumni.”

“People, friends of mine were like, oh, we're gonna see this mass extinction of these unicorns. They're all gonna die because, you know, they're gonna run out of money. No one's gonna fund them. The liquidation preferences are huge. They can't go public. They a…”

“Unicorns, people thought were gonna die, but they didn't die. They just became what I'm calling zombie corns. They still exist. They cut spend. They can't grow. They just exist. They're zombies.”

“I just have a company that's just become a unicorn and a late stage fund just put in almost nine figures. Okay. And they own as much as me.”

“Probably 50 of our 120 unicorns are technically not Indian, right?”

“I think there'll be many unicorns in this space.”

“The probability at seed of picking something that becomes a unicorn is three percent.”

“With six percent of YC startups already becoming unicorns, if Gupta can add the value that we think he can, there's no reason he can't add billions to YC's future returns.”

“The death zone is working at a mid fund or a family office and not being able to do a lot of deals because then you're not building up the brand value of working at a great firm and you're just not doing enough volume of deals so that you can build up a track …”

“So that means there's over a thousand private unicorns that, that are somewhat stuck right now and could not raise enough rounds.”

“Lots of people talk about the zombie corns, right? We have a thousand companies that are, that were unicorns. A lot of those will never get back there. I've said, 80% of those companies will never get back there.”

“And sometimes people, they're kind of, they're trying to find, like, a perfect solution, but the truth of life is that nobody knows future, and nobody may make, like, perfect decisions just based on information or analysis, because if it were the case, then Mc…”

“I think it is a challenge for a lot of companies when you can't show them a path. And I think it was a bigger challenge in twenty-twenty-two. I think some companies have been able to sort of like show a path or have gotten there. But I think they're probably m…”

“We have two unicorns so far and we have probably another dozen that I would expect to become unicorns over the next couple of years, you know, that are sort of valued in the mid hundreds of millions.”

“I think, 60% of the unicorns that were marked up in, you know, in our 20, 21, 20, 22, Are probably not going to ever realize their markups.”

“I missed more unicorns a year where I was only doing investing than all the years where I was doing investing on the side. And either working at a startup or building my own.”

“I really don't like the stay private forever idea. It works for some companies where you have an Elon Musk running SpaceX, and you know, the intrinsic motivation and experience will lead to a good outcome. It doesn't work well for 3050, bless you, of the other…”

“And you know, you, I mean, I can't speak to Gong in particular, but I think all of these folks, they're gonna have to rebuild their entire management teams if they haven't already. You need, you just, it's too much for the team. Folks that I know that work at …”

“And, you know, I think we have over a thousand of these companies that are marked over a billion dollars that still have to get work through the system.”

“We can all laugh about the, that 800 of the thousand unicorns are junk. They're junk of corns. It's going to turn true”

“If you actually look at the research, what you'll find is that super founders, these are multi-time founders who've had material success in the past. Super founders are six times more likely than first time founders to create a unicorn.”

“Late stage deal size falling more than 50%. There's the fewest number of IPOs since 2013. So again, a 10 year low, the fewest number of unicorns in the last seven years.”

“2021 comes in and somehow we have 600 unicorns.”

“You're going to see more private to private as well. And the reason why that makes sense for a private company is because if you're a one product company, going back to the platform play, you're going to go, you're going to have to buy another product or two a…”

“The data says that super founders, and these are founders of successful, materially successful startups are six times more likely to create a unicorn than first time founders.”

“So I think two thirds of all unicorns in the world have a member of the guild and most companies in New York, but there's companies in China and there's companies in Europe.”

“In the late area, there's a lot of unicorns that are going to be zombie corns, right? And that's part of our job of trying to ascertain and understand what those portfolio looks like.”

“Most Yeah, most of these unicorns are worth less than their total press stack.”

“And I think that's the scary scenario that's likely going to play out at not all, but a good chunk of these companies that are, there are still businesses, they have decent value to their business, but they just raised too much capital relative to the valuatio…”

“So I think this, some of this stuff is starting to shift a little bit, largely because so many of these unicorns are going to be, you know, un, unhorned, or whatever the right term is, unwinged, unhorned.”

“I think if I were to sort of divvy up that pie of those companies, sort of mid to late stage private tech companies, not in AI, and what's going to happen to them next year and in 20, 25, I think a third of them are just going to go under, or a third of, I sho…”

“So in a Unicorn, you get a billion dollars valuation. Founders probably end up owning 10% of the company. That's a hundred million. You build a Proficon. You build a hundred million dollar revenue, ah, valuation company. If you own most of it, that's the same …”

“There are 1400 unicorns at the end of 2022, and a hundred percent of them will likely do a down round. And if you said, what is the average that they're going to be down, it's over 50%.”

“Yeah, I'd say 30 to 40% are these companies that were valued over a billion dollars that don't have product market fit. They'll disappear.”

“Every unicorn from like the, you know, 20 tens era that that scale did performance marketing, but not everyone during that time who did performance marketing scaled.”

“There've been a hundred unicorns in India. They're now kicking off a new generation.”

“I have several that, a couple that raised it north of a billion dollars in valuation with double digits, ah, millions in revenue, ok? And hooray, they have a lot of money in the bank. None of them are ever planning to ever raise another dollar of capital. It's…”

“I don't think anyone brags about being a unicorn today, do they? Do founders brag about it? It's gone out the window as a term of brag, brag, bragification.”

“We had a stat that eight out of 10 unicorns have been ambush clients at some point.”

“Everyone with their unicorns. I don't think anyone brags about being a unicorn today, do they? Do founders brag about it? It's gone out the window as a term of brag, brag, bragification.”

“And so we're able to come in and be that senior strategy layer that's, you know, helped grow 10 plus unicorns a year.”

“When we did the original unicorn analysis, we looked at kind of vintage birth years, and like what were the best years to start or found a unicorn, and generally downturn Years are the best years.”

“10% of unicorns have founders that attended Stanford.”