A unicorn a day: why $1 billion startups have lost their former importance

On February 2, Hubert Palan launched the Zoom conference and prepared to speak to about 400 employees at his startup Productboard. As CEO of the company, he wanted to break the news: their firm had just been awarded another $1.7 billion in funding. This meant that the company could now officially call itself a “unicorn,” a startup term that investors, is worth $1 billion or more.

Palan, 43, jumped up and down like a baby and tried to turn a video call into a celebratory moment. “I was running around like crazy all over the room on camera in Zoom,” he comments. Palan took out a unicorn-shaped Christmas ornament, which he decorated with a small Productboard logo sticker, and attached it to a long chain. He then hung the jewelry around his neck and began to shout and applaud along with his staff, even though their microphones were turned off.

Being a unicorn may have meant a lot to Productboard, but in the IT industry, that title carries far less weight than it used to. The term appeared almost a decade ago, at a time when $1 billion startups were rare and highly valued. Then only the most fortunate of the founders and investors could see them with their own eyes. Now the production of "unicorns" reaches an industrial scale.