{"id":462,"date":"2024-10-08T11:30:53","date_gmt":"2024-10-08T11:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/athlavaluations.com\/blog\/?p=462"},"modified":"2024-10-17T10:51:57","modified_gmt":"2024-10-17T10:51:57","slug":"big-fake-valuations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.athla.co.uk\/insights\/big-fake-valuations\/","title":{"rendered":"Big fake valuations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not my claim but a statement from CB Insights in the US.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Last week I received an email with this subject line. It certainly made me open the email.<\/p>\n

It came from CB Insights which has been growing like a weed selling data and insights on primarily US private companies.\u00a0 The weekly emails from Anand the CoFounder and CEO are always worth a read, not least because of the writing style.<\/p>\n

On 3rd<\/sup> October Anand said:<\/p>\n

\u201cHi there<\/em><\/p>\n

1\/3 of all unicorns have a valuation<\/a> right at the $1B mark (or close).<\/em><\/p>\n

85% of these are fake unicorns…<\/em><\/p>\n

…who will never realize that valuation.<\/em><\/p>\n

These are companies that chased the $1 billion valuation mark cuz it was:<\/em><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. A status symbol<\/em><\/li>\n
  2. Viewed as a way to recruit great talent<\/em><\/li>\n
  3. Easy to get<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    But the fundamentals of these businesses never made them worth $1B.<\/em><\/p>\n

    \u00a0Lots of distressed and \ud83d\udd25 sales about to come to market.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Financial sponsors must be lickin’ their lips for the bargains to be had.<\/em><\/p>\n

    See the full list of unicorns here<\/a> if you want to identify who is in the 85%.”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    It is a list you should definitely read. It has over 1,250 unicorns on it as defined by the valuations at which they have raised funding from VCs et al.<\/p>\n

    My favourite fun fact from the list is around 1,000 have joined this club since the beginning of 2020.<\/p>\n

    How does the UK compare?<\/h4>\n

    The UK cohort is interesting. CB Insights uncovered 53 unicorns of which around 30 are in financial services or insurance or serving those businesses with enterprise technology.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Is that telling about the balance of business in the UK \u2013 possibly?<\/p>\n

    We are the 6th<\/sup> largest economy in the world.<\/p>\n

    \"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

    Source: Statista<\/em><\/p>\n

    This is how we compare in terms of value of unicorns as a % of GDP<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    So in global terms the UK isn\u2019t doing too badly as a percentage of GDP. Wouldn\u2019t it be great it we could add another 50% to that percentage so we matched the US?\u00a0 That\u2019s only another 26 unicorns @ $3.3bn each!\u00a0 Surely that is possible?!<\/p>\n

    At Athla we value companies ranging in in equity value from \u00a3nominal to \u00a3100ms. Quite literally no job is too big or too small.<\/p>\n

    Whilst employee incentives are often an entry point for a valuation exercise, it is becoming increasingly common for our valuations to become part of wider strategic discussions.<\/p>\n

    If you have a client who need a comprehensive, fully argued valuation that will stand up to scrutiny, do get in touch.\u00a0 We would be delighted to help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Not my claim but a statement from CB Insights in the US.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.athla.co.uk\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.athla.co.uk\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.athla.co.uk\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athla.co.uk\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athla.co.uk\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.athla.co.uk\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":478,"href":"https:\/\/www.athla.co.uk\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions\/478"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athla.co.uk\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.athla.co.uk\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athla.co.uk\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athla.co.uk\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}