📶 Where'd all the unicorns go?

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Good morning 👋

Yesterday we shared a list of companies on their way to becoming billion-dollar businesses. Today we’re sharing some more data on the same subject.

Spoiler alert:

There a lot fewer unicorns walking around than there were just a few years ago.

Keep reading to poke around with the data for yourself.

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TL;DR:

• 📰 News

• 🔗 Links

• 🐥 Tweet

• 💰 Funds

• ™️ Startups

• 📶 Recs

• 🗳 Poll

HEADLINES
Where’d all the unicorns go? 📉

• Emerging Unicorn Board (Crunchbase)

• Parker Conrad says founders have been building software wrong for the last 20 years (TechCrunch)

• AI eats up 41% of US VC deal value, with help from Big Tech bucks (Pitchbook)

• Why Every Big Tech Company Has Failed to Dethrone Nvidia as King of AI (WSJ)

• Why AI Risks Are Keeping Board Members Up at Night (WSJ)

• Appetite wanes for VC defense-tech deals (Pitchbook)

• AI Startup Glean Nears Fundraising Round Valuing It at $4.5 Billion (WSJ)

LINKS

🔟 Ten of the Best SaaS Growth Charts: Who doesn’t love SaaS data

🛟 Lifesaving Lessons: What the aviation industry can teach us about learning from failure

⏰ Time Management Techniques That Actually Work: Lenny brings the ten tactics he uses every single day

⌚️ The Crucial Role of Timing in Startup Success: Paul Orlando spent the past few years focused on the timing question and shares his findings

🏖️ Do Founders Ever Take Vacation?: Hard reality is founders do not have the luxury of taking time off in the early days

⊹ SAFE vs. Convertible Note Comparison Matrix: A free tool to tell the differences, know what is better, and to have a handy reference

🧭 Confluence.VC Navigator: Our internal navigator tool to help readers find what they’re looking for

TWEET

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FUNDS

P.S. 👉 If you’re looking to get a new VC job … 

We’ve found the best way to do that is to find the jobs before they become available. In our opinion, the best way to do that is to a) find who is raising funds and b) find who is the right person to contact at each of those funds.

Lucky for you, we’ve already collected all of that information for you.

Here’s how to see all the information we have on funds (plus contact info)

STARTUPS (Together with Harmonic)
Stripe-backed pre-seed and seed companies 🔎

We use Harmonic to get thousands of data points on companies like these. 

Here’s how you can do the same.

RECS

🔎 Creator Spotlight: The best newsletter we’ve found on growing and monetizing as an online creator

⚡️ Big Desk Energy: Startup insights, stories and vibes sent to your inbox every Tuesday

🧠 Strategy Breakdowns: A 3-minute email on the strategy playbooks and growth hacks that build the world’s greatest companies

POLL

Thanks for reading this far and giving us a little bit of your attention this week.

Feel free to unsubscribe whenever this stops becoming valuable to you.

- Clay

RESULTS

Here are the results from our poll question in yesterday’s piece:

Would you ever invest on an uncapped SAFE?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 No chance - those days are over (16)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Yes - but only for a once-in-a-lifetime deal (11)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes - not a concern for me (5)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Don't care - show results (5)

37 Votes