What is Unicorn company?

A unicorn is a startup company valued at over $1 billion. The term was coined in 2013 by venture capitalist Aileen Lee, choosing the mythical animal to represent the statistical rarity of such successful ventures. A decacorn is a word used for those companies over $10 billion, while hectocorn is the appropriate term for such a company valued over $100 billion. According to TechCrunch, there were 279 unicorns as of March 2018. The largest unicorns included Uber, Xiaomi, Airbnb, Palantir, Dropbox and Pinterest. Snap, Inc. is the most recent decacorn that turned into a public company on March 2, 2017.

独角兽公司是估值超过10亿美元的创业公司(startup)。这个词是2013年由风投(venture capitalist)Aileen Lee创造(coin)的，用上古神兽(mythical animal)来表现这些成功风投的稀世罕有(statistical rarity)。十角兽(decacorn)用来表示那些超过100亿美元估值的公司，而百角兽(hectocorn)则是1000亿美元。根据科技媒体TechCrunch的报道，截至(as of)2018年3月，共有279家独角兽公司。世上最大的独角兽公司包括Uber, Xiaomi, Airbnb, Palantir, Dropbox 和Pinterest。Snap是最新的十角兽并于2017年3月2日成功上市(turned into a public company)。

Bill Gurley, a partner at Benchmark predicted in March 2015 and earlier that the rapid increase in the number of unicorns may "have moved into a world that is both speculative and unsustainable", that will leave in its wake what he terms "dead unicorns". Also he said that the main reason of Unicorn's valuation is the "excessive amount of money" available for them. Research by Stanford professors suggests the average unicorn is overvalued by 48%.

2015年3月甚至更早之前，Bill Gurley在Benchmark中预测，独角兽公司数量的高速增长把世界推向了投机(speculative)和不可持续发展(unsustainable)的深渊。只有其所谓(what he terms)的“独角兽之死(dead unicorns)”到来时世界才能苏醒过来。同时他还说道，独角兽公司高估值的背后只是供过于求的(excessive)现金流罢了。斯坦福大学教授的研究结论指出，平均每家独角兽公司的市值被高估48%。