The term ‘unicorn’ was first used to describe a category of high-growth company in a 2013 blog post by venture capitalist Aileen Lee. She defined a unicorn quite narrowly as a US-based software company started since 2003 and valued at $1bn+ by public or private market investors. These companies are very rare and very desirable to investors, hence ‘unicorn’. Venture capitalists hunt for start-ups with unicorn potential because they need their many risky investments to return the occasional reward.
Back then, Lee counted 39 unicorns. Today, there are many more – over 1,200, according to the CB Insights definition of private companies valued at $1bn+. Almost half of those are based in the US and a quarter in China.
The mightiest unicorn is TikTok owner ByteDance (China), which is valued at $140bn. There are two other members of the ‘centicorn’ club: SpaceX (US) at $127bn and Shein (China) at $100bn. As well as centicorns, you might hear talk of ‘decacorns...