List of Unicorns

[iii]

I don't know if this has been discussed here before (I couldn't find a thread, but please mods shunt this over if such exists), but for the last six months to a year certain financial analysts have noticed the nakedness of a lot of Web 2.0 (2.1?) companies. I just came across this list of so-called "unicorns" -- Tech companies valued at more than $1 Billion for reasons that seem as plausible as those given for domain name squatters before the DotCom meltdown in 2000.

It's quite the list

[lilburne]

Let's try to think of a taxi company anywhere in the world that is worth 10 million including assets. Now why would an app with no assets behind it be worth 5000x as much?

[MoldyHay]

Let's try to think of a taxi company anywhere in the world that is worth 10 million including assets. Now why would an app with no assets behind it be worth 5000x as much?

Because the rules are different on the interweb.

[iii]

Because the rules are different on the interweb.

Are they?

Sorry to necrothread, but it looks like time's up for many unicorns.

After staving off mass failure by cutting costs over the past two years, many once-promising tech companies are now on the verge of running out of time and money. They face a harsh reality: Investors are no longer interested in promises. Rather, venture capital firms are deciding which young companies are worth saving and urging others to shut down or sell.

t has fueled an astonishing cash bonfire. In August, Hopin, a start-up that raised more than $1.6 billion and was once valued at $7.6 billion, sold its main business for just $15 million. Last month, Zeus Living, a real estate start-up that raised $150 million, said it was shutting down. Plastiq, a financial technology start-up that raised $226 million, went bankrupt in May. In September, Bird, a scooter company that raised $776 million, was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange because of its low stock price. Its $7 million market capitalization is less than the value of the $22 million Miami mansion that its founder, Travis VanderZanden, bought in 2021.

Faking it never seemed to actually reach the making it phase for most unicorns. Fancy that. But even as the bust curve tumbles on, the article mentions that another bubble is inflating:

The industry’s gloom has also been masked by a boom in companies focused on artificial intelligence, which has attracted hype and funding over the last year.

If I knew the timeframe that AI would be overvalued for, I'd gleefully short. But, as with all these manias, it's hard to know how long in the future one needs to wait before it all comes crashing down. And, occasionally, companies figure out how to pivot just enough to survive their own demise. Uber right now is at an all-time stock price high, for example.

[ArmasRebane]

If I knew the timeframe that AI would be overvalued for, I'd gleefully short. But, as with all these manias, it's hard to know how long in the future one needs to wait before it all comes crashing down. And, occasionally, companies figure out how to pivot just enough to survive their own demise. Uber right now is at an all-time stock price high, for example.

I just don't get why. Uber made sense when it started out: disrupt taxis with freelancer drivers and then replace the drivers with automation. But the driverless cars thing isn't happening any time soon, and they've been increasingly banned or cracked down on.