Among the forty European young unicorn companies, thirteen new ones managed to join the group of those that earned over one billion dollars last year. The list of new unicorns includes, for example, Shazaam, Farfetch, Ve Interactive, and BlaBlaCar. European unicorns are led by the Luxembourg telecommunications company Skype, the Swedish digital music service Spotify, and the new unicorn Rocket Internet, a German internet company.
The first two earned 8.5 billion dollars each, while Rocket Internet generated just half a billion less. Research conducted by the London investment banking firm in technology GP Bullhound reveals that the average value of European unicorns on the list is generally three billion dollars. All forty European unicorns together are worth 120 billion dollars; American Facebook and Uber are valued at 230 billion and 50 billion dollars, respectively. In the United States, 22 companies managed to become unicorns during the same period.
Five Dinosaurs
The research included technology companies founded in the last fifteen years, mostly from the United Kingdom, with seventeen; Sweden is second with six companies, while Germany and Russia each have four. More than 58 percent of unicorns were founded by entrepreneurs in their thirties, and in 87 percent of cases, at least one founder is at the helm of the company.
– For the first time, it was seen that there is an environment and financing that allows European companies to compete with American rivals in attracting money and talent. The next challenge for Europe is to elevate unicorns to a higher level. To truly compete with the world, they must figure out how to earn ten billion or one hundred billion dollars – said Manish Madhvani, co-founder and director of GP Bullhound.
In recent years, there have been more and more unicorns. These are small companies that reach a value of over one billion dollars, or about seven billion kuna. Only 0.14 percent of young technology companies manage to achieve this. According to last year’s revenues, only five Croatian companies could resemble unicorns, but they have existed for decades, so they might be called dinosaurs in our context. These are INA, Konzum, Hrvatska elektroprivreda, Zagrebačka banka, and HEP – Distribution System Operator.
However, according to the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 research on fast-growing Central European companies, Croatia has eight representatives this year, compared to last year’s four. This is a list of companies with the highest revenue growth from 2011 to 2014. The Croatian software company Serengeti is in ninth place. Its revenue increased by 843 percent, and it appeared on the list for the first time. However, it is far from the magical threshold at which unicorns are created, as it generated revenue of 6.35 million kuna last year.
