Death by Overfunding: One Kings Lane

Flash sales sites were part of the cool startups once. Venture capitalists put in money in these sites because they thought the sites would be strong competition to online and store-based retailers. The sites also started to carve out their own niches, with focus on fashion, shoes, and even home décor products. Initially, the businesses did well. Most flash sites were set up in 2008-2009 when the economy was in trouble and retailers were looking to offload merchandise. But as the economy picked up, the flash sites lost their glitz.

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Pinterest, an Unlikely 2017 IPO Prospect

After the dry spell for tech IPOs in 2016, 2017 is expected to be a busy year. Billion Dollar Unicorns Snapchat and AppDynamics have already filed to go public and another unicorn that has long been on the IPO prospects list is social media content discovery app Pinterest, which has low revenue but a ridiculously high valuation. >>>

IBM Delivers Nineteen Straight Quarters of Declining Revenues

For the 19^th straight quarter, IBM (NYSE: IBM) has reported declining revenues. But the silver lining in the results was its performance in its strategic imperatives. The company saw strong growth for the cloud, analytics, mobility, and security businesses. The growth wasn’t enough to keep the market happy. Despite the company surpassing market expectations, the stock fell post the result announcement. >>>

Netflix’s Content Keeps it Ahead in the Video Race

Video streaming has caught on incredibly well. According to a MarketandMarkets report, the global video streaming market is expected to grow from $30.29 billion in 2016 to $70.05 billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 18.3% during the forecast period. Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX), the pioneer in video streaming, is reaping the benefits of this trend. But the competition is also increasing. >>>

2017 IPO Prospects: Can Airbnb Overcome Regulatory Hurdles?

Vacation rental site Airbnb is expected to be one of the biggest IPOs this year. The company may not have either confirmed or denied reports of an upcoming IPO, but the market is waiting eagerly for it to list so that they can cash in on its soaring valuation.

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Death by Overfunding: Powa Technologies

There is no other company that illustrates the roller-coaster ride of a Unicorn as graphically as the United Kingdom’s Powa Technologies. Powa had helped put London on the Unicorn map by becoming one of the few multi-billion dollar ventures. Then with not as much as a whimper, it transformed into a Unicorpse with investors still struggling to understand what went wrong.

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2017 IPO Prospects: DJI Drones Drive its Soaring Valuation

According to a report by Grand View Research, the commercial drone market was pegged at $552 million in 2014 and was projected to grow 17% annually through 2022. Another report by the researcher estimates stellar growth in the consumer drone market, which is expected to be worth $4.19 billion by 2024. Overall, the drone industry is dominated by Chinese Billion Dollar Unicorn club member DJI.

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Implosion of Media Startups

The year 2017 started off with news of blogging platform Medium laying off 50 people or one-third of its staff because it is unable to make money selling ads. Since then, the media industry has been on tenterhooks. BuzzFeed also reduced its revenue projections by 50%. The latest news from Medium has renewed fears that the media industry is about to implode. >>>

2017 IPO Prospects: Apttus Hedging Exit Options

Quote-to-cash SaaS player Apttus has been toying with the idea of going public for a while. In September 2016, the company made it clear that it will go public in the first half of 2017.

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Billion Dollar Unicorns: Neo Technology Takes Databases to the Next Level

According to Gartner, the global database market is estimated to be worth $33 billion in 2015. The market was dominated by traditional relational databases back in the 1990s, but in the 2000s, innovative technologies such as document databases, NoSQL, in-memory, graph databases have become popular. One such pioneer in the industry is Neo Technology, which recently joined the Billion Dollar Unicorn club.

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