Pages tagged: 'Unicorn'
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Scale Up or Cover Up?
Investing in fast growing scale up businesses that generate over 100X is the stuff analysts dream of. Yet it can so easily all go wrong, no matter how deep your pockets are. Cast your mind back to 2012 and imagine that you’d been offered the opportunity to invest in a technology business that was changing the way people and businesses work.
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Unfortunate Unicorns
Unicorns remain the ultimate achievement for entrepreneurs and investors alike. But away from the kudos of joining this exclusive club, are such goals the best target to aim for?
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Will Europe overtake the US for Tech?
Earlier this year Forbes updated it’s list of the most successful tech companies. Europe is larger, more populous and arguably more creative than the US. Yet why do we still not match the US for tech?
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Should Interest Rates Interest Tech Investors?
So the BoE has finally signalled its intent to return to normalised monetary policy and raised interest rates. It’s accepted that it will not have much effect on the incoming spike in inflation - caused mainly by exchange rates – but may well have a detrimental effect on already fragile economic growth. Adding this to the headwinds of Brexit, does this signal danger for the tech investor or opportunity?
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Biggest may not be Best
The brightest stars get most attention but are unicorn company returns quite so fabulous? Tech market analysts CB Insights keep a track of the world’s unicorn companies – those private companies valued at more than $1billion. CB Insights reckons that there are now 183 such companies worldwide, with a combined value of $657bn.
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Bulls, bears and unicorns
Is the market turmoil making it harder for innovative companies to IPO – or providing opportunity? In March 2014 King Digital, the makers of the hugely popular Candy Crush game, launched it’s IPO. All the signs were good and the market was in stable bull territory. However, in the first day prices tumbled from the IPO guide at $22 to less than $18. For a $7bn company, it was the largest IPO failure for a tech business for some years. The stock further declined to $12 over the next few months. Yet today, those early investors may be thinking how smart (or lucky) they were when others are losing their heads. So what is going on?
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Evolution of the Unicorn
Forbes magazine runs a yearly Midas list – a set of 100 venture capitalists, investors and commentators who apparently have the knack of turning otherwise ordinary investments into gold.
One of the consistent names on the list is Bill Gurley. You’ve probably not heard of him, he works at Benchmark, one of the many Silicon Valley VC firms. However, Bill has some notoriety as recently he’s been talking about the rise – and imminent fall – of unicorn technology companies.
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Giving it Away for Free Lands S1bn
If you want to find out what people think, of you, your product, or even where you should go for the Christmas meal, the chances are you’ll use Survey Monkey. It’s simple, easy to deploy, almost user foolproof – and the basic version is free. So how come the company has joined the “unicorn” brigade of $1bn plus?
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