CB Insights - VCs wanna be us

Hi there,

At CB Insights, we’ve developed a pretty neat algorithm to identify future unicorns — Mosaic, which tracks startup health. 

Last year, we picked 50 cos that we thought would become unicorns. We’ve already had more than a third of those predictions hit the $1B+ valuation mark. And in 2015, we also predicted 50 future unicorns, and 52% of them have proven us right. We talk about our algorithm to identify unicorns here.

That’s a pretty darn good track record.

And now, we’ve done it again in collab with Fast Company. Take a look at some of this year’s picks below.

Some key findings: 

• Enterprise/big data is hot, hot, hot, representing 30% of our picks

• Fintech is another popular sector, largely propelled by international market growth 

• Most of the cohort is based in North America, but Europe and Asia also have notable representatives

Where the money is 

This year's cohort of future unicorns is different from the past — most cater to corporations, rather than consumers. 

Here’s the full list of 50 startups that we think will become unicorns.

Make it rain on dem haterz

Buy low, sell high. How hard can it be?

Chatty chatty bot bot 

Facebook recently released a technical paper detailing its progress in developing shopping chatbots, which could bolster its social commerce ambitions. 

Take a look at how chatbots are transforming retail — as well as fintech, healthcare, law, and more — in our report here.

Got my unicorns in the back

Asia saw no new unicorn births during Q1’20, but it remains home to some of the most valuable AI startups in the world.

Check out the top-funded AI unicorns in Asia here.

Work hard, play hard

Each day of the CB Insights Technology Conference will feature 20+ fireside chats highlighting technology’s impact on these major themes: money, shop, play, and more.
 

Here are a few confirmed speakers addressing our Play theme — how technology is changing the way we entertain ourselves:

• Daniel Cherry III, Chief Marketing Officer, Activision Blizzard Esports (NASDAQ: ATVI)
• Alex Chang, Chief Marketing Officer, San Francisco 49ers
• Jason Citron, Co-founder & CEO, Discord ($2B valuation; chat tool for gamers with 900M+ daily messages)
• Delane Parnell, Founder & CEO, PlayVS (the official high school e-sports league) 
• Bing Gordon, Partner, Kleiner Perkins (co-founder, EA; board member, Zynga)
• Jeremy Liew, Partner, Lightspeed Ventures (investor in Affirm, Snapchat, and Ripple)
• John Riccitello, CEO, Unity Technologies ($6B valuation; real-time 3D development platform for gaming and AR/VR)

The conference kicks off in just 6 days. Register today and save $100 with code play.

Fast Company. Mark Sullivan (@thesullivan) pulls out insights and trends from CB Insights’ 50 future unicorn picks of 2020.

Becker’s Health IT. Jackie Drees (@JDrees_Beckers) breaks down Amazon’s healthcare moves in the past year and references CB Insights research.

International Business Times. Katharina Buchholz (@KatBuchholz) looks at the highest-valued startups in the world and cites CB Insights data.

P.S. We’re looking for a senior software engineer (data). Check out the job description here.

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