Waiting for more UNICORNS
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Text: Petr Šíma; Photo: Archive
A new unicorn was born in the Czech Republic in February. Only the second one. Thanks to the new investment, the valuation of the technology company Productboard exceeded one billion dollars. Like the online supermarket Rohlik.cz, it can be a proud holder of the label unicorn, a mythical animal, which means a lot in the startup world. It is a huge breakthrough that will attract the attention of other investors and new customers. It shows that the company has already overcome major childhood illnesses and has entered adulthood. It is not yet a giant corporation, its spirit is still a young company run by enthusiastic founders. However, unicorns are not born overnight. It usually takes several years for companies to grow to this size. It took
Rohlik.cz seven years, Productboard eight. Moreover, it is never possible to predict with certainty that a startup will belong to the unicorns one day. Europe is lagging behind. Roughly one in two of today‘s thousands of unicorns was born in the United States, followed by China and India. But the situation is changing. Every year, Atomico publishes a study on the state of European technology companies, and the current one is quite optimistic. Ninety-eight new startup unicorns were born in Europe. More than ever before. The volume of investments in emerging projects and advanced startups is growing rapidly. And from that other unicorns could grow one day. Atomico has even calculated that the average time taken to reach the one-billion-dollar mark is shortening.
