'BLOOD IN THE WATER' — 90% of the billion-dollar unicorn startups are in trouble

[marmar]

(Business Insider) Jim Breyer, the venture capitalist who made a fortune investing early in Facebook, is optimistic about the long-term picture for the technology industry.

He's particularly bullish on artificial intelligence, and he says his firm isn't investing in anything that doesn't have a smart data analytics piece to it. He likens the new artificial-intelligence era to the social-networking era, which changed the entire digital landscape.

But in the near term he sees pain.

We spoke with Breyer briefly at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

He says there is "blood in the water," and we are entering a 90-10 situation for the unicorn class of startups with billion-dollar valuations in which 90% of the startups will be repriced or die and 10% will make it. ..............(more)

http://www.businessinsider.com/blood-in-the-water-90-of-the-billion-dollar-unicorn-startups-are-in-trouble-2016-1

[el_bryanto]

1. I wonder if that's normal or not

I mean a start up means you have an idea that you think can sell; or you have a product you are hoping to develop - but surely most of those must go nowhere. For every good idea there has to be a few bad ideas.

But 90% seems pretty high.

Bryant

[GummyBearz]

2. He's also narrowing it down within the start up space to the BILLION dollar valuation start ups

Any company that is not even selling a product yet, but valued at a billion freakin dollars (or more), is probably being over valued. There is the rare exception like facebook, but I think valuations are just too high in 90% of these cases.

[el_bryanto]

3. That makes sense. Yeah you shoot for the billion dollar stars

you are going to miss a lot of the time.

[dembotoz]

4. approaches the failure rate for restaurants

business failure is really quite common

worked with small and micro business for quite a few years now.....

quite stunning really