I didn't knew the meaning of "unicorn" when applied to companies. Maybe I'm the only person who still hadn't, but if there are others - to save them a search query:
Thank you. Suddenly last year many people repeated the phrase 'unicorn X', and I didn't know the meaning until today because it looks like a marketing buzzword and I just rolled my eyes and moved on.
"Wow, 11 of these 50 were funded by Y Combinator:" - Paul Graham via Twitter - worth a read of that thread in which PG also notes that he has had nothing to do w/class selection since 2014:
It has to be. Many people know how to write software, only few get ongoing advice from the industry's top advisors and have a line out the door to fund them. King-making is a thing, even if only a partial thing.
The online pharmacy (Alto Pharmacy) and online doctor (KRY) are the ones that sound like they could be unicorns, but they are going against entrenched interests.
Uber took on cab drivers and won. Doctors and pharmacists have much stronger quasi-unions (the AMA and AphA).
Earnin is a scam that disproportionately targets young poor black/latino people. It's JG Wentworth in an app. Doesn't count as a unicorn because it's not innovative at all.
The payday lending industry operates within an intrinsically challenging ethical landscape. Their customers are generally poor, often desperate, and proportionately vulnerable. But payday lenders also don't operate within a vacuum: often the costs of high-interest-rate loans are dwarfed by comparison to the late-payment fees charged by credit cards, landlords, insurance companies, doctors offices, auto lenders, bank overdrafts, etc... As the saying goes, it's expensive to be poor. In one survey of payday loan customers performed by GWU Business School, 89% of borrowers said they were "very satisfied" or "somewhat satisfied" with their most recent payday loan. [1] No one wants to be in that situation, but for some, payday loans are the best or only option.
It's one thing to call out the kind of deliberately predatory behavior that has thrived in the payday lending industry, but it seems like Earnin is earnestly trying to provide a service that many Americans outside (and inside) the Bay Area fall back on, in the fairest and least-predatory way possible. As far as I'm concerned, that's something to be applauded, not scorned.
The study showed that people showed a strong tendency to tap other options where payday operators weren't available and ended up financially better off overall.
Wow. That app is creepy. It tracks your location so it knows when you got to work and left work. It tracks your bank account so it knows when, how often and how much you deposit. Etc.
Some creepy tracking, but curious why you think it’s a scam? I understand how payday lenders can be considered scams, but it seems like Earnin makes all the fees optional.
I haven’t used the app, just read their marketing pages, BTW so I may have missed something.
They site a lot of stuff from cbinsights. I don't know about others but I find cbinsights analysis a bit sloppy sometimes. They kept crowing about the potentials blockchain and how it was the future all through the crash as though it wasn't even taking place. They also had this piece about we work which painted them in glowing colors right in the aftermath of the additional funding from softbank not coming through, giving fluffy reasons why they think their still going to continue to upend the industry. Plus all their emails end with "I love you" which is getting old and annoying. Not intentionally smashing them but just making the point that aside from the numeric data they collect on startups which is pretty cool, I'm skeptical about using their analysis pieces as a proper source
They should describe how they came up with this list.
For example, Alto pharmacy, which appears to primarily operate in California, is on the list. They raised $50 million last December. Capsule pharmacy, which essentially does the same thing, primarily operates out of NYC. They also raised $50 million a few months earlier, in August 2018, but are not on this list.
Wonder why?
A funding round is for X% of a company at $Y dollars, which values the company at $ ((100 / X) * Y).
Looking at two recent announcements that I follow, Aurora raised $530mm at $2.5b valuation and Nuro raised $940mm valued at $2.7b. Aurora sold ~21% ownership, and Nuro sold ~34% ownership, but both ended up around the same valuation.
I realize that, and I don’t have the valuation numbers for either company, presumably CB Insights does.
But using the example you gave, if there were a list of companies entering the 3 billion valuation, business fundamentals aside, I’d be hard pressed to pick between Aurora and Nuro.
I've watched several UK startups try and get funding without going to SV and it is painful to watch how utterly amateur and pathetic trying to get startup or VC capital is in the UK.
No one really. I believe the GP comment is confusing that with sentiment against SF costs and culture, as well as sentiment against the value of unicorns in general.
"A unicorn is a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicorn_(finance)