Risking your neck to run with the unicorns
Startups and investors are finding there's a huge price to pay for that coveted US$1 billion valuation
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IN THE world of Wall Street, where numbers are everything, one number is especially coveted: one billion. Technology startups that achieve US$1 billion in valuation before going public - so-called unicorns - can attract the attention of prominent venture capital firms and draw résumés from top talent across the country.
The number is so important that 41 companies are valued at exactly US$1 billion - a record, according to the venture capital research firm CB Insights. And 103 startups have exceeded the billion-dollar valuation, the firm's statistics show, even though valuations can be more art than science, based on a wide range of criteria that do not always centre on financial data.
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