60 The EconomistApril 4th 2020
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or a senseof how covid-19 is affecting
the world’s technology “unicorns”, as
privately held firms worth $1bn or more
have come to be known, consider two of
them. Lime, a scooter-rental firm valued at
$2.4bn, has halted its services in Europe
and America, where most citizens have
been told to stay off the streets. DoorDash,
a $13bn food-delivery company, has sud-
denly found itself useful to a self-isolating
society as a whole, not just couch potatoes;
deliveries have surged.
On the surface, DoorDash stands to ben-
efit from the pandemic, and Lime to suffer.
In fact, the coronavirus may prove more in-discriminate than that. It strikes at a time
when many of the world’s 450-odd uni-
corns were looking ropy. Their perpetually
loss-making business models—only a
small proportion are in the black—were in-
creasingly being questioned. So were their
exuberant valuations, which added up to
perhaps $1.3trn globally. A reckoning was
afoot; some unicorns would “go under”,
Dara Khosrowshahi, boss of Uber, a ride-
hailing giant which relinquished its un-
icorn status by going public last year, told
The Economiston March 2nd.
Among investors, “fear of missing out”
has been giving way to “fear of looking stu-pid”, says Alfred Lin, a partner at Sequoia
Capital, a venerable Silicon Valley venture-
capital (vc) firm. Plenty have given up try-
ing to do new deals; instead they are trying
to save old ones. One firm is telling its com-
panies to expect 30% less revenue in the
next two quarters and to cut costs accord-
ingly. On March 5th Sequoia put out a
memo entitled “Coronavirus: The Black
Swan of 2020” warning that the outbreak
will depress startups’ growth and calling
on its portfolio firms (one of which is Door-
Dash) to rein in costs, conserve cash and
brace for capital scarcity.
Most telling, the gospel of growth at all
cost has gone out of the window. After
years of initial public offerings (ipos) being
done without much focus on profits, “path
to profitability” is the new watchword, says
Ryan Dzierniejko of Skadden, Arps, Slate,
Meagher & Flom, a law firm. “The law of
economic gravity has returned as it does
every decade or so,” says Michael Moritz,
another Sequoia partner. For some uni-
corns, dispensing with eight flavours of
sparkling water and five selections of Thai
curry may be a good start, he adds.
The unicorn reality check was under
way before America declared a national
state of emergency over covid-19 on March
13th. Venture capitalists reckoned that a
third of American unicorns would thrive, a
third would disappoint and a third would
be taken over or die. As investors the world
over scurry to safe assets amid a market
meltdown, Mr Khosrowshahi’s prediction
may come true faster than he thought.
Some discern an echo of the dotcom bub-
ble, which burst 20 years ago. Others are
more sanguine. Whoever is right, startup
pastures that emerge in the aftermath will
look very different to today’s.
Unicorns have come a long way since
Aileen Lee, founder of Cowboy Ventures, a
vcfirm, coined the term in 2013, to convey
wonder and rarity. Nowadays every startup
wants to be one, for bragging rights and to
hire the cleverest coders. “For millennials
and Gen Zs being a unicorn became a filter,”
says Jeff Maggioncalda, ceoof Coursera, a
unicorn that offers online learning courses
and university degree programmes. A
small Austin-based scooter startup called
itself, simply, Unicorn; the attempt to le-
verage nominative determinism failed
when the firm went bust in December after
spending all its cash on Google and Face-
book ads.
For the past decade huge sums from
sovereign-wealth funds, mutual funds and
hedge funds poured, directly or via vc
firms, into startups that were unicorns or,
their backers believed, might be one soon.
Total annual vc investment in America
leapt from $32bn in 2009 to $121bn in 2018.
Some $822bn has flowed into American
startups since 2010. About as much hasExit unicorns, pursued by bears
SAN FRANCISCO
The pandemic rams home what markets already felt: technology unicorns are
headed for a fall. The consequences will not all be badBriefing Anatomy of an investing bubble