From B2C and B2B business models to SaaS products, today's unicorn companies have a solid go-to-market strategy. Their success proves that it is the only way to serve their market.
"In our second year running this report, it's incredible to see the differences between startups that excelled at go-to-market in 2020 and 2021. In 2020, we saw a lot of companies going to market and growing extremely fast in terms of capital, headcount, and revenues. Some of them are already household names (Gorillas, Clubhouse...). Unlike in most economies, Covid-19 helped a lot of startups as some founders were already convinced the world was going remote and that our habits would change for the greater good (Remote, Hopin...). A year after we published our report, 6 companies from that initial list passed the $1B valuation mark: Clubhouse, Volta Trucks, Hopin, Gorillas, Wiz and Remote, with Primer valued at $500M, which is fairly impressive.
In 2021, the startups we have found are very different. Many companies we featured decided to operate in stealth mode for a long time ahead of making their product available on the market. We see companies that are way less capital intensive and are instead focused on serving a particular audience's needs.
It clearly shows that the relationship between investors and founders has changed. Recent startup founders tend to favour a more cautious approach to grow more sustainably in the long term over early and fast capital growth."
