Tech unicorns, like their legendary counterparts, had been as soon as uncommon occurrences however over the previous a number of years VC funding has boomed and so have the variety of unicorns. Crunchbase estimates that there at the moment are over 1,000 unicorn corporations in existence. The truth is, the label unicorn has turn out to be so in style that buyers minted a brand new phrase for startups with a valuation increased than $12 billion. Regardless of unicorn standing not being as unique because it was as soon as, it’s nonetheless an incredible feat for corporations to succeed in.
A current evaluation by ZenBusiness, a digital enterprise schooling platform, evaluated the time it took tech startups to succeed in unicorn standing since launch. It concluded that fintech firm Avant was the quickest firm on this planet to succeed in unicorn valuation. Based on ZenBusiness, Avant reached the $1 billion valuation mark just one month and 16 days after launching in November of 2012.
U.S.-based tech startups that reached unicorn standing took a mean of seven years and 13 days to succeed in the valuation, placing Avant’s month and a half blitz properly forward of different corporations, in line with the evaluation.
Headquartered in Chicago, Avant employs round 250 native people and has a complete of 500 workers worldwide. The corporate was co-founded by Al Goldstein, John Solar and Paul Zhang.
Regardless of Avant being extremely enticing to buyers, it stays underneath non-public possession and by no means went public. Thus far, the corporate has introduced in $1.6 billion in enterprise funding, in line with Crunchbase.
The fintech platform affords private loans ranging between $2,000 and $35,0000 at decrease rates of interest than different lenders. It additionally offers credit score traces and on-line banking with the aim of constructing monetary providers extra attainable to all residents.
Whereas not all startups attain unicorn standing at record-breaking speeds, a number of native startups have joined the Chicago unicorn membership. Most not too long ago Copado, a no-code cloud operations platform, hit the $1 billion valuation late final yr. Final June, B2B software program gross sales evaluate platform G2 was additionally inaugurated into the membership.
Avant at the moment has a number of job out there throughout a number of departments.