Billion Dollar Unicorns: Shopify Preparing for an IPO

According to a research study conducted by BigCommerce, e-commerce sales will grow to $2 trillion in 2015 with the SMB segment in the US alone accounting for over $100 billion in sales. Billion Dollar Unicorn club member Shopify is helping retailers make their mark in the dot-com space.

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Billion Dollar Unicorns: MongoDB Rises High on NoSQL Databases

According to IDC, the global Big Data market will be worth $16 billion in 2016. While the market is still dominated by SQL-based databases, there is also a rapidly growing demand for non-row and column-based databases – the NoSQL databases. Researchers at 451 Research estimate that the NoSQL database market will grow from $184 million in 2012 to over $1 billion by the year 2016. Billion Dollar Unicorn club member MongoDB is a big player in the NoSQL database market.

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Billion Dollar Unicorns: Rocket Fuel Crashes on Results

According to a recent eMarketer report, the global advertising market is estimated to grow 6% over the year to $592.43 billion this year. The US is the biggest advertising market and is expected to account for 31.9% of the global market share. Mobile and digital advertising are expected to be the key drivers of worldwide growth in the future. Digital advertising is expected to grow to 33.5% of total advertising market by the year 2017 to $224 billion. Mobile accounting will account for more than half of the digital advertising market in that year. Within digital advertising, former Billion Dollar Unicorn club member Rocket Fuel has seen their valuation soar and then come crashing down in the face of weak financial performance.

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Billion Dollar Unicorns: Evernote Cracks the Freemium Model

Most apps operate on a freemium-based model, but converting the free user to a paying member is a tough hurdle to cross. Billion Dollar Unicorn club member Evernote seems to have cracked the code for it.

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Billion Dollar Unicorns: Cloudera Leverages Open-Source Hadoop to Create a Multi-Billion Dollar Business

A recent IDC research expects the Big Data technology and services market to grow 26.4% annually through 2018 to be worth $41.5 billion. The growth translates to six times that of the overall information technology market. Palo Alto-based Big Data vendor Cloudera is one of the prominent Billion Dollar Unicorn players in this market.

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Billion Dollar Unicorns: Fat Startup Adaptive Insights Leading in Cloud CPM

Fat startup Adaptive Insights is another proud member of the Billion Dollar Unicorn club. They are a leading provider in the cloud-based Corporate Performance Management (CPM) solution market that IDC estimates to be worth $33 billion. Here is their story on how they made it to the club.

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Billion Dollar Unicorns: OnDeck Scoring in Small Businesses Instant Loans

According to a survey of small businesses conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, to process a loan, a small business has to spend at least 26 hours, approach 2.6 financial institutions, and submit 2.7 loan applications. Billion Dollar Unicorn club member OnDeck is trying to make a big difference in cutting all this effort.

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Billion Dollar Unicorns: Shazam Makes it to the Club

Here is an interesting story of music recognition app provider Shazam, which has slowly made its spot in the Billion Dollar Unicorn club. Today, Shazam is a lot more than just a music recognition service.

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Billion Dollar Unicorns: HubSpot Sustains Solid Growth Post IPO

According to a survey of small and medium businesses conducted by CAN Capitol, 38% of SMB owners plan to increase their advertising and marketing activities this year. Billion Dollar Unicorn club member HubSpot is a rising star in this market, focusing on the inbound marketing segment for these SMBs.

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Billion Dollar Unicorns: Stripe Exploring Tie-Ups for Growth

A Forrester research estimates the mobile payment market to grow to $90 billion in total spending in the US alone by the year 2017. One player making big waves in the market is Billion Dollar Unicorn club member Stripe.

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