What it takes to build a billion dollar tech company, and what it means for startups in the Arab world
Yesterday, Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures took an honest look at what it takes to build a billion dollar company in Silicon Valley today. After looking at public data on 39 companies that launched after 2003 and grew to a valuation (either public or private) of over $1 billion within the past 10 years, the Silicon Valley-based VC concludes that it’s rare and difficult- only around 0.07% of companies founded today hit the billion mark.
While much of the data focuses on the U.S. market, some of the
conclusions about these so-called "Unicorns" could translate to the
Arab world (for all of the findings, read the original
article):
- The rise of unicorns has coincided with a wave of
technological innovations. In the 1960s, it was the
semiconductor; in the 70s, the personal computer; in the 80s,
networks; the 90s, the internet; and in the 2000s, social networks
were built. Facebook, now valued at $122 billion, is far and away
this era’s biggest unicorn.
- Consumer-focused companies have created the majority of
value over the past decade. Facebook, Amazon, and Google
have far surpassed most other billion-dollar unicorns, and, among
these 39 companies, consumer-focused companies have generated more
than 60% of aggregate value.
- Enterprise-focused companies are generating better
returns on investment. Consumer-oriented companies
may be generating more value overall (and there are more of them),
but enterprise-focused companies have generated more value per
private dollar invested. Most are worth 26x the amount of capital
they’ve raised, with a few reaching a valuation of 60x their
investment. In comparison, these consumer-focsued companies, on
average, are worth 11x the investment they've raised.
- Four main verticals are accounting for the majority of
unicorns: e-commerce (especially
those that don’t hold physical inventory as a key part of the
business model), audience/content businesses,
which are free for consumers and monetize via ads or leads,
software as a service (SaaS), often
consumer-facing cloud-based software services, and
enterprise companies that charge companies for
large-scale software. Of those verticals, e-commerce companies have
delivered the lowest returns per dollar
invested.
- Cofounders are experienced. Most founders of
these billion dollar companies are over 30 (34 on average), and
most have at least one cofounder, with three cofounders on average.
Ninety percent of teams have past history working together, while
80% had at least one cofounder who had started a company before.
Most also attended selective universities.
- IPOs don’t come overnight. The companies
on the list that went public took over 7 years, on average, to do
so. In the Arab world, it might be safer to think about exits as
acquisitions, or to not think about them at all.
- No current tech unicorns have women cofounders. Wow. (Perhaps Gilt Groupe needs to reconfirm that $1 billion valuation).
In the Arab world, the majority of investments in early and
growth-stage startups in the past couple of years- made by the
region’s most
active venture capital firms- have gone to consumer-facing
startups. Just take a look at the portfolio companies of MEVP, some of STC’s
investments, the companies BECO Capital has funded,
and others like Silicon Badia,
Sadara, Vodafone
Ventures, and Wamda Capital).
Ideavelopers
may be one of the few VCs in the region with a portfolio of over
50% B2B companies.
In a tough emerging market, businesses that have a solid business
plan and are already generating revenue are often more appealing to
investors, but this doesn’t necessitate that a company focuses on a
B2B model. B2C is faster to scale, but more vulnerable to market
shifts; B2B customers, as Walid Mansour of MEVP points out, are
“harder to lose." MEVP, he says, doesn’t prioritize one over the
other, looking at companies on a standalone basis.
The difference in return on investment in the U.S. for B2C and B2B
companies is worth looking at, yet if there’s one take-home from
this data that's most relevant for the Arab world, it’s perhaps
that, although e-commerce accounts for 85% of the
total amount invested in tech startups in the Arab world last
year, it’s not the only big bet out there when it comes to
scalable tech verticals.
As e-commerce evolves, discount sites in flash sales and daily
deals are likely to add or pivot into full sale verticals this year
before they’ll be generating the returns their investors would like
to see. Some of the region’s most prominent acquisitions over the
past year have been in media and
digital media
services, while SaaS- especially cloud services- are likely to
rise, as
cloud workload grows faster in the Middle East than anywhere
else in the world over the next four years.
Of course, if building a billion dollar company in the Arab world
is your only goal, you might as well launch something in
telecommunications, petroleum products, or infrastructure (although
three of the top ten
largest companies by market capitalization are tech startups,
most of the
largest companies in the world by revenue aren’t).
But if you are interested in building a scalable tech company,
perhaps you’d better start tapping (stalking) your pool of college
and high school friends to find a talented, educated, non-annoying
“serial entrepreneur,” if you haven't already.