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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