Run for Unicorn.

It doesn't matter if you are interested in finance, startup ecosystem, and technology, for the past few years you must have heard the buzzwords like Unicorn, Startup, Entrepreneurship, VC funding, and what not. It was like a utopia where every startup that you have heard of becomes a unicorn and it seems that you only have to make a company become a unicorn and nothing else.

First of I am not against any unicorn but quite opposite of that as this unicorn status might be that starting boost to those who really want to work on startup but as time is passing there are few questions are emerging about this startup ecosystem and unicorns and we will go one by one.

The first one is not a question but more of a reality, Covid-19 and the Pandemic started there was one thing happened US started printing more and more dollars, and this liquidity has to go somewhere some of this went to equities but also a significant portion of this money went to startups for example, for last financial there was funding raised for the startup was 600 Billion dollars which were more than twice as compared to the previous year. Now as US FED is increasing interest rates this liquidity is going back and it will not only hamper the expectations of those who took the past as inspiration.

Secondly, unicorn status is the end goal ?. As an Indian, it was quite an extraordinary year as India's startup ecosystem witnessed a boom which was the result of many factors and one I explained above. India just passed the unicorn count of 100 and it was a great achievement but if we dig deep down we found that only 18 of those 100 unicorns were profit-making ( as of today). I know profitability is not the only measure to measure success but it is one of the important and we might loosing on this side.

Thirdly, Investors are investing or trading. Don't get me wrong here I am not at all saying investors have to do socialism but it is quite evident that some of them play a trading game, for example, investing company and creating hype about its future prospects, as soon as IPO comes exit from the company and make that 100X return and from point of view of investor it is not wrong but I do find this is quite problematic as those who deserve this funding are not getting this and also those who got this are not that strong fundamentally and you might have guessed about whom I am talking.

Lastly, you must have come across news that says many companies are laying off their employees. Since the beginning of 2022, at least 5,600 startup employees have been impacted by cutbacks, termination of contracts and layoffs, From unicorns such as Unacademy and Vedantu to global tech companies in India are part in this.

We have to rethink this startup ecosystem and have to focus on making it a much more robust, self-sustaining, and transparent manner. The above points are just snippets and you can find much more thought on each of them if try to study them. Also, I do have such points for another day.