In the not too distant past large corporations were measured and valued via the public stock exchange on which they were listed and the price of their traded shares. Today large corporations such as AirBnB, WeWork and others are able to grow from bare bone startups to behemoths without having to tap the public markets for funding as their predecessors were pressed or chose to do.
This week the quarterly reconstitution of The Prime Unicorn Index, which tracks privately funded US companies and their share price performance, added nine new companies as Unicorns or Approaching Unicorns to the Index list. Unicorn are privately held companies that have surpassed $1 billion in valuation, while Approaching Unicorns have attained $500 million valuations. The nine additions join 85 other companies to comprise the expanded and reconstituted Index.
The reconstitution which went into effect on January 17th now includes: Discord Inc., Bolt Threads Inc., Pindrop Security Inc., Urban Compass Inc., Flatiron Health Inc., Health Catalyst Inc., WellTok Inc., Proterra Inc., and AvidXchange Inc.
Since the Index is comprised of privately held businesses, it is achieved using hard to source objective data including proprietary research from Lagniappe Labs.
“We are excited to be the primary resource for investors and help them better understand how to assign the true valuation of private companies as they look to go public,” said Ross Barrett, team executive at the Prime Unicorn Index and founder of VC Experts. “Taken as a whole the Prime Unicorn Index achieved a positive return of 9.3% in 2017 and provides a unique way for institutional investors to access the private markets, whether they want to go long or short.”
