Oversupply of Money are making valuations soar and unicorns Breed!
In the past week alone, investors valued five more startups at $1 billion or more, bringing the total this month to 26, PitchBook data shows. What was once a remarkable milestone worthy of special mention has become ever more common.
VCs are investing in clusters - with well funded Startups having warchests to make strategic acquisitions
Cyber Security - Signifyd $1.34b
Remote hiring platforms - Deel $1.24b
A $ Billion Dollar fund needs $5b to move the needle
How does a fund find a Unicorn Founder?
Ali Tamaseb (pictured), a venture capitalist with the Silicon Valley deep-tech firm DCVC. Explores what a unicorn founder looks like - in his book “super founders” coming out in May
Is it
- A Stanford graduate
- An ex employee of Google , Amazon or Facebook?
- Does Age, education, Ivy League matter
“What matters is having a history of having generated value, even if that value was small." Says Tamaseb
Case study
The founders of Honey, a scrappy fintech company based in Los Angeles, turned out to be antiheroes with a great shot at unicorn stardom despite their seeming lack of a dream pedigree. George Ruan and Ryan Hudson bootstrapped Honey, a provider of coupon codes for online shoppers, because they couldn't get VC funding for the first couple years. After eventually getting backers from outside Silicon Valley's venture establishment, Honey took off and in late 2019 it was acquired by PayPal for $4 billion. Ruan and Hudson didn't have great connections or big names on their resumes, but they had produced a few small ventures along with their failures.
"These people are more likely to found billion-dollar companies compared with people who have the perfect pedigrees," Tamaseb said.
