unicorns_world

The number of startups in the world is increasing every single day. There are people coming up with new ideas everywhere, dreaming of making it big. The next Mark Zuckerberg or Arianna Huffington might be sitting in their rooms and working on their idea somewhere in the world, we might not know. Our of these startups there are some that are a class apart, the "Unicorns" as the world calls them and, even more, rare are the "Decacorns". These are normally those startups that stir up the minds of people and make them want to reach for the stars too.

These so-called Unicorns are startups that have crossed an evaluation of $1 billion and the Decacorns are the ones with a valuation in excess of $10 billion. Like the government tracks all the rare species, VB profiles also decided to make a list of these rare creatures. They have counted a whopping 210 Unicorn Startups till now and about 21 Decacorn Startups. Digging a little deep, they found that half of these mystical creatures live in the state of California.

These startups are not uniformly distributed over the different sectors. Most of these big startups like Alibaba and Etsy to name a few, are concentrated in the consumer sector ( about 98%) and the rest are distributed in different sectors like fintech, healthcare, cleantech etc. But no other sector has a huge majority like consumer and retail industry.

unicorns_industry-wise_large

Geographically speaking (as in top-most image), about 101 of these startups have their headquarters in the state of California. The next big fish in terms of cities is New York, housing 23 such startups. Crossing the Atlantic, we have only 13 startups in Europe spread across Germany and the UK. Moving further east, one big contender is China which has 33 startups alone and next in line is India with about 6 such startups and a few in the pipeline.

time_building_unicorn

The year 2015 is a big one in the startup industry. In this year alone there we 81 startups that crossed the unicorn line and 1 startup that crossed the decacorn line. It is good to know that this growth is not just restricted to the US, 30% of these startups are based out of the US and spread out on the map a little wider. According to the founder Spoke, the recipe for a unicorn though not specified but has some key ingredients that make it work. Based on research it takes approximately 6 years and 95million on an average for a startup to become a unicorn, provided the idea is good and so the execution.

These unicorns and decacorns are the ones who make the rich richer. The top investment firms of the world, most of which are US based, are the ones who invest in these startups and make their money. Investing in these startups can be a bit risky. If you invest in the initial stages, the chances of getting returns are lower, but the chances of return are much higher if the investment is made during a later stage.
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