Irene Lee came up with this now-famous notion: billion dollar valuation companies which are still new and young and private...are as rare as Unicorns.
Amazingly, the modern era has changed all that. Literally dozens (now going on hundreds) of companies are getting billion dollar valuations while still private. That used to be a thing that companies only achieved years after they'd gone public for a few hundred million dollars. But in the world of no-friction internet commerce, companies can grow from nowhere to somewhere insanely fast. Witness the rocket ship rides that GOOG and AMZN and FB and NFLX have taken.
