Unicorns are going out of fashion for tons of investors, The Business Insider - India reported on Sunday.
The tech and startup investment is now going to be defined by a different beast this year; which is the cockroach. "Everything is about resiliency now to weather the storm. Unicorn, it's a mythical beast, whereas a cockroach, it can survive a nuclear war," Tim McSweeney, a director at technology-focused merchant bank Restoration Partners, said.
The unicorn represents fast growth and is fuelled by VC money. Uber is a prime example that an idea of reaching a certain "scale" first before focusing on making money can somehow work. There were a lot of companies that joined the unicorn club last year. Some of them were TransferWise, Lyft, Zenefits, SoFi, Hellofresh, Prosper, Oscar and Farfetch, https://www.cbinsights.com/research-unicorn-companies venture capital data tracker CB Insights indicated.
In contrast, a cockroach is characterized by a business that slowly builds up and runs steadily from the get go, just focusing and keeping a steady eye on revenues and profits. In order to weather certain storms, spending is always kept in check.
"For the investment side, it's minimizing the risk. Let's find a company that can survive a nuclear war and then come back to fight another day or pivot and do something different - it has the right team, the right customer base, etc.," McSweeney said. He mentioned to Oscar Williams-Grut of The Business Insider India the cockroach concept at the Virtual Technology Cluster (VTC) Group launch in London recently. They later on discussed it over the phone.
McSweeney was not the first one to use the term cockroach, nor was he the one who originally coined it, and that investment theory is a rather old one and the founder of Flickr, Caterina Fake, has also written a blog post about the idea last September.
