[SIGCIS-Members] So, about these "unicorns"...

[Magnus Boman]

Born and raised in Stockholm I too read that article on the startup
'mystery' here, on the "why does healthy and wealthy people innovate?"
theme, as per usual. (A: they do not spend their time looking for food and
clean water for a start.)

About the unicorn, it's been a 4chan meme since at least six years,
denoting an act of the (even to /b/) completely unexpected. Usually it is
apologizing, or admitting someone else is more intelligent. Yes, 4chan
invented trolling too. ;)
M.


On Wed, Apr 8, 2015 at 7:13 PM Marc Weber <marc at webhistory.org> wrote:

> Don't forget that we have trolls too....
>
> On Apr 8, 2015, at 09:39, Henry Lowood <lowood at stanford.edu> wrote:
>
>  Tom,
> Quick response from the Valley: From what I have read and heard, the
> "unicorn company" concept is mostly attributed to TechCrunch.  I believe
> the article you cited was the unveiling of the term, but TechCrunch has put
> out a series of posts and articles since then.
> And there are dragons, too:
> http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/14/unicorns-vs-dragons/
> This one ends, "All things being equal, I would rather back a dragon than
> a unicorn."
> Henry
>
> On 4/7/2015 9:23 PM, Thomas Haigh wrote:
>
> Dear SIGCIS,
>
>
>
> To raise a question that may or may not turn out to have an explanation
> within our domain of expertise, I've been struck recently by frequent
> references to "unicorns" in the business press. This crystalized over
> breakfast last week when I noticed an article "Stockholm: The Unicorn
> Factory" in my usually reserved Financial Times.
>
>
>
> Apparently the consensus definition of a "unicorn" in this context is a
> newish company worth more than $1 billion. Stockholm has more per capita
> than anywhere but Silicon Valley. A total output of five sounds more like
> an atelier than a factory, and unicorns probably come from unicorn farms
> rather than assembly lines, but that's not really the point.
>
>
>
> The point is: unicorns are not just vanishingly rare. They're mythical.
> Until recently, if someone told me I was pursuing a unicorn I'd have
> assumed they meant I was wasting my time. So where does the metaphor come
> from? Something that's very rare but very valuable might be worth pursuing.
> Something that is flat-out imaginary seems a bad goal for investment
> dollars or public policy.
>
>
>
> Is this something to do with the popularity of fantasy literature in the
> tech field? Did it start as some kind of joke and get out of hand? A quick
> Google search suggests that it was popularized with
> http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/02/welcome-to-the-unicorn-club/, which
> offers no particular justification for the term beyond "to us, it means
> something extremely rare, and magical."
>
>
>
> Tom
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>
> --
> Henry Lowood
> Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections;
>   Film & Media Collections
> HSSG, Green Library, 557 Escondido Mall
> Stanford University Libraries, Stanford CA 94305-6004
> 650-723-4602; lowood at stanford.edu; http://www.stanford.edu/~lowood
>
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>
> Marc Weber <http://www.computerhistory.org/staff/Marc,Weber/>  |
> marc at webhistory.org  |   +1 415 282 6868
> Internet History Program Founder and Curator, Computer History Museum
>
> 1401 N Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View CA 94043
> computerhistory.org/nethistory
> Co-founder, Web History Center and Project, webhistory.org
>
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