The New Unicorns of 2023

In the US, 78 new unicorns emerged in 2019, 11 more than in 2018. China unicorn creation slowed down substantially in 2019 with 22 new unicorns from a high of 58 in 2018. The next highest count of new unicorns is Germany and Brazil with five, a record for both countries. Israel, India, and the UK all report four new unicorns this year.

Unicorn Funding By Year

To understand 2019 through a different lens, let’s switch gears from the 2019 new unicorn cohort to funding to all unicorn companies. In 2019 unicorn companies raised $85.1 billion — down from 2018 at $139 billion, and 2017 at $93.8 billion.

Despite concerns about a changed venture funding market after WeWork pulled their IPO on Sept. 30 2019, funding to unicorns was up quarter over quarter by 11 percent, but the quarter was down year over year by 54 percent. It is worth noting that 2018 included two of the largest rounds ever to unicorn companies with $14 billion invested in Ant Financial, and $12.8 billion in Juul. However, these two rounds alone do not account for all the increased funding to unicorns in 2018. We fully expect 2019 invested dollars to increase at a greater rate than prior years as new unicorns are minted in 2020.

2019 Unicorn Cohort

2019 new unicorn companies collectively added $216 billion to unicorn valuations, and $50.5 billion in equity funding in total over time. The leading sectors for 2019 unicorns were in Financial Services, Commerce and Shopping, Data and Analytics, Transportation, SaaS, and Health Care.

The five most highly valued new unicorns include:

  • Uber Advanced Technologies Group ($7.3 billion) the autonomous vehicles subsidiary from Uber
  • JD Health ($7 billion) an e-commerce platform for pharmaceutical products
  • Databricks ($6.2 billion) unifying customer analytics
  • CloudKitchens ($5 billion) Travis Kalanick’s smart kitchens for food delivery
  • Rivian ($5 billion) a sustainable automotive technology company

Six companies that became unicorns in 2019 and also went public in the same year, listed in order of IPO valuation, are:

All of these companies had an increased valuation at their IPO over their last private funding round in 2019, ranging from 25 percent for Health Catalyst to 189 percent for 10X Genomics.

Investors In The 2019 Unicorn Cohort

With $50 billion invested in this new unicorn cohort, it is interesting to look at the investors fueling the growth of these companies. The most active investors in companies that became unicorns in 2019 by portfolio count include the following:

Insight Partners with 13 portfolio companies, Spark Capital and Tiger Global Management with 11, New Enterprise Associates, GV, General Atlantic, and SV Angel at 10. This list of investors includes a mix of early and late stage venture, corporate venture, and private equity/alternative investors all actively seeking stakes in highly valued venture backed companies.

The most active investors by deal count, which showcases investors who are in multiple rounds for companies who joined the unicorn ranks in 2019 include the following: New Enterprise Associates in 30 rounds, Insight Partners (26), Kleiner Perkins and GV (25), Accel and Spark Capital (24).

2019 Unicorns By Founders

While there is no shortage in funding for these high-value companies, there remains a discrepancy between the number of male and female founders that reach the coveted unicorn status. Five (4 percent) of new unicorns in 2019 had female-only founders and 16 (12 percent) were co-founded by a female-male team. Overall, 114 (84 percent) unicorns in 2019 had male-only founders.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

Meditation and HOT apps for finding your Zen

Just a week ago it has been it had been announced that the meditation app Calm hitted unicorn status as it raised fresh $88 million funding. Such news is also interesting because this is to be the World’s First Mental Health Unicorn.

Calm was launched in 2012 and since then there had been arose a lot of apps for meditation and wellness as the interest in all the aspects of mental health is growing up for the last years.

Yes, we do know that meditation carries all kinds of benefits as it is transforming the mind, encouraging concentration, clarity, emotional positivity and calmness. But to be sincere, meditation sounds simple enough, but it’s not so easy for oneself to deal with all the sort of distracting thoughts when it comes to the practice. That’s where meditation apps come in. They’re like a little guru in your pocket which make it easy to easy and possible to practice meditation anywhere.

We, at Alty do practice meditation and really enjoy it. So here they are our TOP-5 meditation apps — just choose the one which fits you best, take your seat and concentrate on finding your Zen.

CALM

Nice design with fun animations and a well-organized library of classes. This app offers a nice mix of guided and less structured meditations and it’s easy to customize.

There are also such options as for Daily Calm (a 10-minute program you can practice before the beginning or end of your day), breathing exercises, unguided meditations, sleep stories, and more than 25 soothing sounds to help you improve your sleep.

HEADSPACE

Created by Andy Puddicombe, a former Tibetan Buddhist monk, this app is really cool, trendy, and user-friendly.

The only thing uncomfortable thing is that all of the meditations are guided — there’s no option to hit a timer and simply savor the silence or soothing ambient sounds.

THE MINDFULNESS

App Packed with features, this meditation app includes a five-day guided meditation practice, reminders for when it’s time to relax, and other offers based on individual meditation habits.

And it can also be integrated with other health apps if users enjoy using their devices to improve their health.

INSIGHT TIMER

This free meditation app gives you two options — you can either pick a guided meditation (ranging anywhere from one minute to an hour or more) or you can use the timer option — you choose how long you want to meditate for, then pick a bell sound to signal the beginning and end of your meditation. Also, you can also opt for ambient sound like raindrops or choir music to play while you’re in zen mode.

10% HAPPIER

Based on the book by ABC news anchor Dan Harris, this meditation app offers over 350 guided meditations, as well as video courses with meditation experts. It’s designed for skeptics who want to try meditation, but want to simplify the process with practical, easy-to-apply content.

And a bonus-option is that you can also message meditation coaches and ask them any questions you have about your practice.

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