How Are Unicorns Faring in the Pandemic?
Published in
9 min readJun 3, 2020
Covid-19 has been pretty harsh on the physical world.
Turns out, it has little sympathy for the mythical world either.
Even the unicorns are taking it on the hoof.
See, unicorn companies are privately-held start-ups worth at least $1 billion, and they typically prioritize rapid growth over profits.
The profits, they assure us, will come later. Just don’t ask when.
Many of these companies operate as platform businesses; that is to say, they faciliate value exchanges between supply and demand.
You see them everywhere: think WeWork, Airbnb, or Pinduoduo and you’re on the right track to spot a unicorn.
During this article, we will return to this definition to probe a few assumptions:
- As start-ups, are these giant companies still experimenting to find a working business model?
- Are platform businesses more or less vulnerable right now?
- Are the unicorns really worth as much as they say?
- How will the pandemic affect their future plans?
