When the venture capitalist Aileen Lee coined the term unicorn, in 2013, there were 39 of them—roughly four minted every year. So far in 2021, 264 companies in the United States have reached such valuations. Around the world, multiple startups turn into unicorns every single day.The staggering rate at which companies reach billion-dollar valuations is just one of the ways that venture capital has busted charts this year. “We’re looking at $240 billion invested in VC-backed companies this year, which would have seemed outrageous a few years ago,” says Kyle Stanford, a senior analyst at Pitchbook. “There is more capital and more interest in the venture space than there has ever been.”Between July and September, more than $82 billion poured into American startups, according to a new report on Q3 data from Pitchbook and the National Venture Capital Association. That’s about as much as venture capitalists spent in all of 2017—which was, at the time, the high-water mark for venture capital spending since the dotcom boom of the early 2000s. Globally, Crunchbase found the Q3 total was $160 billion, a …
