According to CB Insights, a startup tracking service, there are 1,000 unicorn startups with a capitalization of more than a billion dollars in the world today. On February 2, they included Productboard, a company that develops solutions for product management.

In the same week, six more companies became unicorns, and forty-two in January. Four startups have become “decacorns” since the beginning of the year, which means that their capitalization has exceeded $10 billion.

The term "unicorn" was coined almost a decade ago, when billion-dollar startups were a rarity. There are many more unicorns in the IT industry today. As Brian Lee, an analyst at CB Insights, points out, a large number of billion-dollar startups is proof that markets are overheated. However, this growth is partly justified: as more services in the world go digital, software companies become more valuable, and developed infrastructure makes it easier to launch a technology business.

Another difference between modern unicorns is the lack of desire for publicity. Analysts point out that in the past, valuable startups would probably have gone public by now. Today, maintaining confidentiality allows many companies to avoid the extra scrutiny that comes with initial public offerings.

Finally, many investors today are looking to enter booming industries such as cryptocurrencies as early as possible, leading to higher valuations for such companies. You can't discount the power of FOMO (Forgone Profit Syndrome), Lee notes.

The term "unicorn" comes from a 2013 article written by venture capitalist Eileen Lee. Looking at US private and public software companies founded since 2003, she identified 39 unicorns among them. These included Airbnb, Dropbox, Facebook, Groupon, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Twitter, Uber, YouTube, Zynga and others.

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