Decacorn
There are people who are so good at identifying animals and associate them with individuals on account of either their extraordinary strength or incomparable weaknesses.
Notably, Sweden’s 17-year old king, Gustavus Adophus, took the throne after his father Charles IX in 1611 inheriting three ongoing wars (against Denmark, Russia and Poland). After winning these inherited wars, he trained his sights on Germany. With the bloody pan-European war between Catholics and Protestants still raging at that time, the young king invaded Germany.
In order to win the trust, hearts and minds of the Germans, “Swedish propaganda successfully exploits an old prophecy that one day a golden lion from the North would arrive to aid the true believers (i.e. the Protestants).” That “the lion would conquer the eagles and the evil empire (i.e. the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholics).”
In this propaganda, Gustavus Adolphus became known as the Lion from the North (in reference to Sweden as geographically situated in Northern Europe) who shall be conquering the eagles right below them geographically.
In the country, as the election fever rises, we’ve seen these references too in some protagonists’ propaganda. The difference is that, while in the 1600s, the Lion from the North conquered the eagles, this time, the lion (from the north) and the eagle (from the south) are teaming up.
Investors and businessmen are using a lot of metaphors too. Among investors, for instance, the terms “bull” and “bear” are commonly used to describe a stock market condition. Whether the value of the investment is appreciating or depreciating. A bull market is one where the market is moving up or on the rise which will normally happen when the economy is performing well and employment levels are high. On the other hand, a bear market is one where the economy is contracting and unemployment is on the rise and most stocks are declining in value.
The terms “bear” and “bull” are believed to be thought up based on these animals’ behavior or action, especially, when they attack opponents. On one hand, a bull will thrust its horns up into the air towards its opponent, while a bear will swipe down. So, when the action or movement is used metaphorically, it is a bull market if it is going up or on an uptrend. It is a bear market when it is going down.
The venture capitalists have their metaphors too. A venture capitalist, by the way, is universally defined as a “private equity investor that provides capital to companies exhibiting high growth potential in exchange for an equity stake.” These are normally promising “startup” companies which would likely deliver massive returns in the future. Such perception or their feel on how the startup companies grow and develop, led to the use of the metaphor “unicorn.”
Coined in 2013 by venture capitalist Aileen Lee, founder of CowboyVC of Palo Alto, California, this metaphor is used in the industry to describe a “privately held startup company with a value of over US$1 billion.”
As of June, 2020, there are more than 600 unicorn companies globally. Among the distinguished unicorns are SpaceX, Robinhood, and Instacart. Appropriately, like unicorns, these companies and their successes are so rare.
In 2007 (six years before “unicorn” was coined), however, Facebook was valued at US$15 billion. A cut above the rest, Aileen Lee then called FB a super-unicorn. Today though, valuations (for start-ups) at US$10 billion and above are becoming so common. So that, VCs have coined another metaphor for it, decacorn. Though just coined lately, on record, the first decacorn was Facebook.
Talking about decacorns, 2021 saw breaking numbers. With a month left, there are already 30 start-ups that have decacorn valuations. This is double the previous year’s 15 and six times that of 2019’s 5 decacorns. Recently, Grammarly (a writing tool) and Faire (a marketplace for retailers and wholesalers), all San Francisco, California-based start-ups joined this select group.
In us, these are successes that are so rare that replicating them seemed impossible. Partly, it is true. Actually, there are two drivers to their successes. These are talents and capital. Talking about talents, we aren’t short of that. The real concern is on the capital. That’s exactly the difference between us and the other countries. In them, talents have venture capitalists’ all-out support. In us, we also have angel investors and venture capitalists. However, they are far too risk averse to be referred to as such.
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