🚀 Medial just raised $500k in Pre-Series A. Tap to read the announcement. 🎉

Download App

Home

Switch theme

Blog . Feedback . Privacy
Community Guidelines

Back to feeds

Arcane

Stealth • 3m

Meet Aileen Lee. Lee, the founder of Cowboy Ventures, is a visionary venture capitalist renowned for her deep insights into the startup ecosystem. A Harvard Business School graduate and former partner at Kleiner Perkins, Lee has a track record of identifying and nurturing groundbreaking startups. In 2013, she authored a TechCrunch article that would forever change the startup landscape. A term was coined by Aileen Lee in 2013, when she and her colleagues at Cowboy Ventures counted just 39 startups that met their criteria: venture-backed startups in the United States (US) trading in consumer and enterprise software which were only 0.07% of all software startups in the US at the time. Her observations quickly gained traction, thanks to extensive media coverage and investor discussions. Fast forward to today, and we have 532 companies in this exclusive club—a staggering 14x growth in just a decade. So what were these companies exactly? UNICORNS!!! Yes. It was Aileen Lee who first coined the term "unicorn" The article she wrote was titled 'Welcome To The Unicorn Club: Learning from Billion-Dollar Startups' Lee explained that she used the word because it is "kind of magical, that takes some alchemy, some great timing—a lot of things have to come together. It's not easy." She emphasized that despite the hype around unicorns, the vast majority of venture-funded companies do not actually reach that level of valuation, making it a "pretty hard thing to do."

6 replies13 likes

Replies (6)

Anonymous 3

Stealth • 3m

Unicorn nahi, cockroach startup banao. Should withstand everything and not get shut down due to macro market changes.

1 replies1 like

Anonymous 2

Stealth • 3m

While the idea of unicorns is exciting, the reality is that most startups can eventually reach such valuations, but still fail shows the high risk involved. Fir bhi lage hue hai.

1 replies1 like

Anonymous 1

Stealth • 3m

Aileen Lee hit the nail on the head with unicorns being rare and magical. But in India, we’ve got startups trying to become unicorns overnight, often without the fundamentals in place. The focus should be on creating value first.

1 replies1 like

Recommendations from Medial

Vikas Acharya
•

Medial • 16d

The term "Unicorn" (startups worth $1B+) originated in 2013. ByteDance leads globally. Unicorn is the term used in the venture capital industry to describe a startup company valued at over $1 billion. The term was first coined by venture capitalist

0 replies1 like

Adnan Sheikh

Stealth • 5m

Startup Fact: Did you know that the term 'unicorn' in the startup world was coined just a decade ago? Aileen Lee first used it in 2013 to describe private companies valued at over $1 billion. In 2013, there were only 39 unicorns. Today, there are ove

0 replies5 likes

Anonymous

Stealth • 6m

My mom has an unhealthy obsession for SIPs! We recently taught her how to use PhonePe. They opened an SIP. Next we know whatever little money she gets hold of she ends up putting in the SIP ☹️ When I encountered her she said that she had profited

17 replies30 likes

Anonymous

Stealth • 7m

Okay, I'll also jump onto the trend and tell you guys an Indian story about condom business- Hear me out, India is the largest manufacturer of condom and the first ever condom was made from sheep's intestine and in India and in many west countries b

5 replies8 likes

Anonymous

Stealth • 9m

My sister got PIP. (Performance improvement plan) She is a data scientist in a company and suddenly out of the blue the HR tells her she is put on PIP. The company isn’t paying salary on time to the employees and they put her on PIP. What should she

9 replies16 likes

Kanishk Raj

Stealth • 5d

The Path to Success: An Indomitable Story Maya dreamed of climbing the highest mountain in a small village nestled between mountains, a place no one has ever reached. The people were convinced that it was impossible, but Maya believed differently. S

3 replies9 likes

BUZZBYTE

Stealth • 1m

Beyoncé has made history by becoming the most-nominated artist of all time at the Grammy Awards, overtaking her husband Jay-Z. The couple had been tied on 88 nominations each - but Beyoncé has now pulled ahead thanks to recognition for her latest al

1 replies1 like

Peace

Stealth • 6m

Why is the craze of Apple IPhone increasing so rapidly in india recently I saw a child which was telling that she needs a iPhone to her father and she is just 9 how Apple Created such a aspiration among people ?

0 replies3 likes

Mr Z
•

Medial • 1m

She was rejected by 100+ investors. An outcast among founders. But today, her business is worth $40 Billion and has 200 Million monthly users. Here's her story: Meet Melanie Perkins. While teaching design at University of Western Australia, she

5 replies41 likes

Mr Z
•

Medial • 1m

Look at this woman. At 19, she dropped out of college. Raised millions from the biggest names for her tech company. Then built a $9 billion empire. And now she’s in prison. Here’s is the story of the greatest Silicon Valley disaster: Elizabeth