Decacorn

A privately held startup valued at ten billion dollars or more, ten times the unicorn threshold. The rarest tier of private company.

Why it matters

Decacorns are the handful of companies investors dream of backing, since a single one can return an entire fund many times over. The term mostly signals just how large private startups have grown before going public.

For example

When a startup's private valuation crosses 10 billion dollars, ten times the unicorn mark, it becomes a decacorn.

Worth your time

Ritesh Agarwal on Building OYO, the Decacorn of India's Hotel Industry SeedToScale (Accel India) · article Agarwal describes how OYO had to define its ideal hotel partner precisely, small, underperforming, willing to be upgraded, before it could promise a consistent experience to the demand side. It is a useful Indian example of picking the harder, more fragmented side, thousands of small independent hotel owners, as the anchor. Listen for how narrowly OYO scoped its first partner hotels before expanding. Open seedtoscale.com →

Related terms

Unicorn Soonicorn Initial Public Offering

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