How Real Unicorn Startups Are Actually Built
There are two completely different ways to build Unicorns: Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later (the 1Mby1M way), or Speculatively Blitzscale. Your probability of success with the first method is much higher.
Let’s look at an example.
Quibi raised $1.75 billion in funding from major investors, including Hollywood studios, tech companies, and prominent individuals.
It launched with fanfare in April 2020.
Founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg and led by former eBay and HP CEO Meg Whitman, the company shut down six months later.
Quibi’s subscription model, with a monthly fee for content that could be found for free on YouTube or TikTok, struggled to attract a large user base.
Unvalidated idea, speculative funding, attempted blitzscaling out of the gate. And then, crash and burn. Happens a lot, unfortunately with these high profile, highly ego and speculation-driven deals.
Let’s look at a different example.
Greg Gianforte, CEO of RightNow, can also teach you a thing or two about the topic of building a Unicorn.
Gianforte is a huge proponent of bootstrapping and a master at cold-calling to find customers even before writing a line of code. RightNow had a $6 million-a-year business when they first raised venture funding at a $130 million valuation.
RightNow was fully validated for scalability. Greg was an experienced serial entrepreneur. RightNow went public and was later bought by Oracle for $1.3 billion.
Quibi was NOT validated. RightNow was.
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So how do you want to build YOUR Unicorn? Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later (the 1Mby1M way), or Speculatively Blitzscale?
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