, Columnist
Bubble Quietly Burst for Overvalued Unicorns
There's still money to go around and the IPO market seems healthy, but the wreckage from the unicorn stampede is hard to ignore.
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Here's a real world experiment to try: Ask 100 people on the street about Cloudera; I bet you'll get 100 blank stares. (Unless that street is in the Bay Area.)
However unknown Cloudera Inc. is to the public, the software company that helps corporations wrangle their digital data achieved an ignominious Silicon Valley milestone. It was the first "unicorn" -- a tech startup valued at $1 billion or more -- that went public at a valuation significantly below its worth as a private company. Cloudera most likely won't be the last, and it's time for the startup world to reckon with the damage done to these fallen unicorns.