{"id":2364,"date":"2019-07-15T22:18:19","date_gmt":"2019-07-15T16:48:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/?p=2364"},"modified":"2019-07-15T22:18:25","modified_gmt":"2019-07-15T16:48:25","slug":"whales-not-unicorns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/whales-not-unicorns\/","title":{"rendered":"Whales. Not Unicorns."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">Some one had to call it out. Fred Wilson did. Why call the \u201chighly valued venture backed startups\u201d Unicorns? In his post yesterday in his much read blog <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/avc.com\/\">avc.com<\/a> he suggests &#8216;Whales&#8217; instead. Whales are rare but whales are real. Just like the highly valued startups.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.licdn.com\/dms\/image\/C5122AQGoUuefeVbVBw\/feedshare-shrink_8192\/0?e=1565827200&amp;v=beta&amp;t=FYK35HjMtgQmGkiOrzmFiA3Tq6YG6sNvxVx8UJ15Cfk\" alt=\"Whales. Not Unicorns. \"\/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>In his post he refers to the book \u201cVC: An American History\u201d by Tom Nicolas a professor at Harvard Business School and a big believer in the merit of the American Venture capital industry. In his book Prof Nicolas begins with the similarity between the 19th Century Whaling industry and  the current VC industry. He then goes onto elaborate on the three complementary factors : \u201d\u2026the long-tail distribution of payoffs, the agent-centered organizational structure, and the system of incentives &#8211; were complementary in their impact. Productivity increased because of their interaction.\u201d Ditto for American VC.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The column sticks to the similarities between the Whaling industry and the current VC industry and ends with his (FW&#8217;s) thought of henceforth referring to big winners as Whales. He hopes it will catch on.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I personally think it is a great idea. Rushing to be a Unicorn always gave me the sense of a wild goose chase.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Where I learnt it #196 Link to article by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/fredwilson\/\">Fred Wilson<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/avc.com\/2019\/07\/whales-not-unicorns\/\">https:\/\/avc.com\/2019\/07\/whales-not-unicorns\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some one had to call it out. Fred Wilson did. Why call the \u201chighly valued venture backed startups\u201d Unicorns? In his post yesterday in his much read blog avc.com he suggests &#8216;Whales&#8217; instead. Whales are rare but whales are real. Just like the highly valued startups.<\/p>\n<\/p><div class=\"more-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/whales-not-unicorns\/\" class=\"btn btn-small btn--dark btn-hover-shadow\"><span class=\"text\">Continue Reading<\/span><i class=\"seoicon-right-arrow\"><\/i><\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"ub_ctt_via":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,83],"tags":[70,81,183],"class_list":["post-2364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-what-i-learnt-today","category-startup","tag-alwayslearning","tag-startups","tag-unicorns"],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Subhanjan Sarkar","author_link":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/author\/subhanjan\/"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paX7jg-C8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2364"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pitch.link\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}