Unicorn (finance)

In the U.S. investment and venture-capital industry the term unicorn denotes a start-up company—originally and often software-focused, but as of 2016 more inclusive of other sectors—whose valuation has exceeded the somewhat arbitrary value of $1 billion.As of August 2015 the largest unicorns included Uber (transportation), Xiaomi (consumer electronics), Airbnb (lodging), Palantir (big data), and Snapchat (social media). Canadian tech unicorns can appear as "narwhals", and a new buzzword, "decacorn", has been reported for those companies over $10 billion, which include all of the foregoing five, as well as companies such as Dropbox and Pinterest. For instance, as of October 2015, Uber was valued at US$51 billion.

Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures made a thorough investigation of the concept of unicorns after that firm established a database of such unicorns to understand their financial, leadership, and technical characteristics.VentureBeat reports 229 unicorns as of January 2016.

Unicorn

The unicorn is a legendary animal that has been described since antiquity as a beast with a large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead. The unicorn was depicted in ancient seals of the Indus Valley Civilization and was mentioned by the ancient Greeks in accounts of natural history by various writers, including Ctesias, Strabo, Pliny the Younger, and Aelian. The Bible also describes an animal, the re'em, which some translations have erroneously rendered with the word unicorn.

In European folklore, the unicorn is often depicted as a white horse-like or goat-like animal with a long horn and cloven hooves (sometimes a goat's beard). In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, it was commonly described as an extremely wild woodland creature, a symbol of purity and grace, which could only be captured by a virgin. In the encyclopedias its horn was said to have the power to render poisoned water potable and to heal sickness. In medieval and Renaissance times, the tusk of the narwhal was sometimes sold as unicorn horn.

Unicorn (Japanese band)

Unicorn (ユニコーン, Yunikōn) is a Japanese rock band, formed in 1986, consisting of Koichi Kawanishi (drums), Tamio Okuda (vocals, rhythm guitar), Isamu Teshima (lead guitar), Kazushi Horiuchi (bass guitar), and Yoshiharu Abe (keyboard, vocals). They reunited in 2009.

There was another band named Unicorn not to be confused with this one, who recorded albums for Transatlantic, Charisma and Harvest during the 1970s. They were a pop/folk/soft rock band.

Unicorn has also recorded the theme song for the Space Brothers anime for episodes 01-13, titled "Feel So Moon".

Members

Unicorn (disambiguation)

A unicorn is a mythical and heraldic beast which looks like a horse with a horn between its ears.

Unicorn may also refer to:

In economics

In culture

In comics

In literature

In music

Albums