How this time really is different

Aggressive valuations among technology companies are hardly a new phenomenon. The widespread concerns over high pre-IPO valuations today recalls debates over the technology bubble at the turn of the century. A sharp decline in the venture-capital funding for US-based companies in the first quarter of the year feeds into that debate, though the number of “unicorns” - start-up companies valued at more than a billion dollars - over that same period continued to rise. The existence of these unicorns is just one significant difference between 2000 and 2016. Until seven years ago, no venture capital–backed company had ever achieved a billion-dollar valuation before going public, let alone the $10 billion valuations of 14 current “deca-corns.” It wasn’t until 2009 that a pre-IPO company reached a $1 billion valuation. The majority of today’s unicorn companies achieved this valuation level in just the past 18 months. Read the full article from McKinsey & Co: (VIEW LINK)