Unicorn is a term in the investment industry, and in particular the venture capital industry, which denotes a start-up company whose valuation has exceeded (the somewhat arbitrary) $1 billion. The term has been popularized by Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures. Fortune magazine counted over 80 unicorns as of January 2015. Now its most likely past 100. But their journey lately has been bumpy.
There are signs of cooling the “lofty valuations” of these unicorns. Fidelity wrote down Dropbox by 20%; Snapchat by 25%; and Zenefits and MongoDB by around 50% each. Zenefits had raised money at a $4.5B valuation in May. The reason for the markdown is the slow growth in meeting their targets. Square which had its IPO earlier in November, was valued at $4 billion, about a third less than in its most recent private round. Several others besides Square have faced “markdowns”: Pure Storage, Box, GoPro, News Relic, Hottonworks, etc.