Maybe the world is finally flat, with innovation and growth flourishing anywhere. In this vision, Silicon Valley doesn t have any special sauce that brews companies that reach a $1 billion valuation.
Hmm.
According to a new study cited by the Financial Times, 60 percent of 134 unicorns, defined as startups that reached a $1 billion valuation in the past decade from being bought, going public or a funding round, were from outside the San Francisco Bay Area.
The findings:
- 79 from the U.S.
- 52 from the S.F. Bay Area
- 26 from China
- 21 from Europe
None came from Latin America, Africa or the Middle East.
Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström, whose venture firm Atomico, worked on the report, declared that there is an irreversible trend of high-value tech companies being created in places outside of the West Coast.
To build a truly successful company you have to have remarkable entrepreneurs, he told the FT. That talent is everywhere.
Maybe. But the study doesn t appear to compare the past decade to previous decades, so it is hard to know if this is indeed a trend. The FT quoted a skeptic who said that West Coast firms like Google and Microsoft are often the buyers of these unicorns.
One thing the study found that is worth noting: Companies are reportedly becoming unicorns faster than ever, with firms taking an average six years to reach $1 billion.
Above: Bob Andres/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, MCT Archives
