Unicorn In The Making: Yext Planning IPO Soon

Continuing with our analysis of Billion Dollar Unicorns, here is a digital advertising start-up Yext, which is yet to hit the billion dollar valuation mark. Its stellar performance does make it a potential Unicorn.

According to eMarketer, the global spending on ads on Internet-connected devices including desktops and mobile devices were estimated to grow 15% over the year to $137.53 billion in 2014. Digital ad spend was estimated to account for just over 25% of all paid media spending worldwide compared with 20% in 2012. Overall digital spending is expected to grow to $204.01 billion by the year 2018.

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Billion Dollar Unicorns: A Rare Media Venture Called Vice

According to researchers, the global digital video streaming industry is projected to grow from $3.3 billion in 2014 to over $10 billion in the next five years. Digital streaming is not only restricted to TV series and movies, but it is also expanding within the fields of journalism. Within the segment, Billion Dollar Unicorn club member Vice Media is gaining a strong foothold in the market.

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Billion Dollar Unicorns: Tableau’s Valuation Increases to $6 Billion

No Billion Dollar Unicorn story can be complete without a discussion on data anlaytics start-up, Tableau Software (NYSE: DATA). Here is the story of how Christian Cabot started this capital efficient unicorn company.

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Billion Dollar Unicorns: ServiceNow’s Expanding Market Opportunity

Here is a brief write-up on another Billion Dollar Unicorn Club member — cloud-based IT Services Management (ITSM) vendor, ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW). ServiceNow has shown how to create a multi-billion dollar enterprise by relying solely on domain expertise.

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Billion Dollar Unicorns: Workday’s Ramp to Multi-Billion Valuation

Continuing with the Billion Dollar Unicorn posts, here is another mega hit in the category: SaaS-based enterprise services provider for human resources, payroll and financial management, Workday (NYSE: WDAY). >>>

Billion Dollar Unicorns: How Marketo Is Faring In The Public Market

Last year, we began tracking some Unicorn companies – essentially organizations with billion dollar plus valuations – inspired by a TechCrunch article by Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures. Some of these Unicorn companies went public last year and have reasserted their high valuations. One such company on my radar is digital marketing solutions provider Marketo (Nasdaq:MKTO). The case study of the company’s founding and entrepreneurial journey is featured in my new book, Billion Dollar Unicorns.

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The Split at HP

According to Gartner’s third quarter report on global PC shipments, the market fell 0.5% over the year to 79.4 million units. Growth in the mature markets was offset by a decline in the emerging markets. Gartner analysts believe that with tablet penetration crossing the 40-50% range, consumers are going back to PC purchases. Lenovo remained the market leader with 19.8% market share, growing significantly over its 17.7% share a year ago. HP is also seeing some gains as it reported a 4.4% increase in PC shipments to 14.2 million units. Its market share improved from 17.1% a year ago to 17.9% during the third quarter last year.

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King Releases New Games for the Mobile Gaming Market

According to an eMarketer report released last month, the mobile gaming market is expected to surpass the traditional console gaming market in terms of revenues in 2015. Latest market estimates project mobile game revenues to grow 42% over the year to hit $25 billion in 2014. The revenues are projected to increase to $30.3 billion by 2015 and to $40.9 billion in 2017. For the current year, eMarketer expects the number of US smartphone gamers to grow 20% to 116.0 million and account for 70% of smartphone users in the country.

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Accenture Revises their Annual Forecast Upwards

According to an IDC report, the IT consulting market is expected to grow 4.1% annually till the year 2017. The significant reduction in oil prices in the last six months is also believed by the company executives to boost global economic growth that could lead to spending in IT capabilities.

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Oracle Soars on the Cloud

According to a survey by IDG, IT decision makers’ spending on cloud computing is expected to increase 42% this year. Its Computerworld Forecast Study 2015 found that after security technologies, cloud computing will be the highest growth in enterprise spending for organizations with over 1,000 employees. Another report by Market Research Media expects cloud computing to grow 30% annually over the period 2015 through 2020 to be worth $270 billion by 2020. Clearly, there is no getting away from the Cloud.

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