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What comes after unicorns and centaurs?



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Lessons from startups that reached the $1B revenue threshold

Alex Wilhelm

7 hours

Once upon a time, reaching a $1 billion valuation was a Big Deal. But the shine that a so-called unicorn valuation conferred on a startup eroded as more and more private companies reached the threshold — often with less and less to back it up.
TechCrunch, where the term “unicorn” was born, noted the dilution of the denomination by working to collect notes instead on startups that had reached a $100 million revenue run rate, often measured in the form of annual recurring revenue, or ARR.

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That project was continued by a venture capital firm, dubbing startups that reached the nine-figure revenue mark “centaurs,” for obvious reasons. The refocus was useful, as there was more to learn from startups that reached $100 million in revenue than those that were awarded $1 billion in valuation.
But what about former startups that reach 10 figures of revenue? What can we learn from them?
Friends & Family Capital (m …

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