Unicorns are real, right?

Revisiting the venture exit pipeline

• growing revenue quickly is hard

• ‘clean up on aisle unicorn’

• start-up M&A accelerates

• need those mythical beasts more than ever

• an historic payday(?)

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Unicorns are real, right?

Yesterday we regaled ourselves with the extraordinary results of some previously scorned technology companies.

Palantir especially was just showing off with its fancy Rule of 40 slide:

Palantir’s got revenue and profits galore.

It’s impressive, because growing revenue is actually really hard.

Growing revenue is hard

I mean, for context, look at how many public SaaS cos are expected to grow revenues by more than 40% over the next 12 months:

Meritech Capital

None. There are exactly zero public SaaS companies, whether profitable or unprofitable, expected to grow toplines 40%+ over the next year.

That’s the story in public markets, at least, but growing revenue anywhere is hard.

Are private market techcos doing better?

Clean-up on Aisle Unicorn

Obviously, it’s harder to know what precisely is happening for private companies, but the story can’t be that much better.

Now, it’s almost certainly true that there are more than zero private cos growing more than 40%, if only because it’s easier to grow (on a percentage basis) off a smaller base.

At the more mature end of the still-private market, however, I suspect the growth situation is a lot like the public one, if not slightly worse.

If it were otherwise, then this probably wouldn’t be the case: