Ten years ago, Aileen Lee, the founder of seed stage VC firm, Cowboy Ventures, studied the characteristics of VC-backed companies. In the 2013 report, “ Welcome to the Unicorn Club ,” Lee coined term “Unicorn” to describe those privately held startups with a $1 Billion or greater valuation. Unicorns were off to the races.
Now, ten years later Aileen Lee and her “Cow-lleagues” have taken another deep dive into VC-backed startups. They have just published, “Welcome Back to the Unicorn Club: 10 Years Later.” And, yes, after a pandemic and years of near-zero interest rates, things have changed. The slide version of the report is 54 slides long, mostly graphs. ...