What is a unicorn company or startup?
A unicorn company or startup is a new business that is valued at more than $1 billion and is privately owned – meaning they aren’t listed on stock exchanges.
Some well-known current examples include Airbnb, Robinhood and Stripe in the US, or Transferwise in the UK.
The term was coined by Aileen Lee, a venture capitalist, in an article written in 2013. She used it to describe the relative rarity of such companies, estimating that just 0.07% of software startups from the 2000s would reach valuations above $1 billion.
Unicorns may be rare, but decacorns – startups with a value of $10 billion – are rarer still. And only a handful of hectocorns, which are worth over $100 billion, have ever existed. Notable examples include Google and Facebook, which both surpassed $100 billion in value before their respective initial public offerings (IPOs). In her original article, Aileen Lee referred to these companies as ‘super unicorns’.
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