Cornucopia
“Cornucopia”– a cartoon that illustrates the different stages of a startup company’s growth to getting to $100Bn valuation.
According to Pitchbook, there are only four companies that achieved the lofty stage of Hectocorn (Stripe, SpaceX, Bytedance and, recently arrived, SHEIN).
What all these high valuations miss is that the options for these companies to exit become extremely narrow.
At $100Bn valuation, these private companies equate to a company in the top 175 companies in the world by market capitalization.
The largest-ever tech transaction was this year’s $96Bn acquisition of Activision by Microsoft … and Apple (with the deepest pockets) has not acquired a company for more than $3Bn.
This means the public markets are the only real option, but with technology stocks off 50%+ of their all-time highs, these horses are going to need a lot more private market feed before conditions are ready for them to head to the races.
