What It Takes to Become a Soonicorn

Last week, Forbes published a list of the 25 “Next Billion Dollar Startups.” The methodology for these things is always kind of funny - they ask VCs to nominate the companies, so naturally it ends up being portfolio companies.

In any case, it’s interesting to see the overall trends and stats for which companies made the list. Here are some of my observations:

• Average equity raised is $120M, and average 2019 revenue is $30M
• 55% of the list is SaaS, 25% is consumer, 20% is other stuff
• 11 of the 14 SaaS companies focus on horizontal software. Only 3 focus on verticals (shipping, healthcare, life sciences)
• Both of the marketplaces are labor marketplaces
• No hardware (only) companies

(Thanks to Elisa for plotting out the data!)