This.

How is it that Avast is still a "startup" when it was founded in 1988?

I mean.. they were founded even before the dot com bubble!

Edit: I know there's always a problem when trying to define what is and isn't a startup...but by all metrics I could think, Avast isn't one of them. I mean, otherwise we would also need to include the likes of Microsoft, Oracle, Google, Amazon as other unicorn startups, no?

A unicorn is a company that has reached 1bn valuation while staying private. So Microsoft, Oracle, Google and Amazon don't qualify (while Google definitely was one for some time, it's just that the term didn't exist back then). Of course it also puts PwC and Bechtel in this league...

I really like Paul Graham's definition. A newly founded company designed to grow very fast

http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html

Yes, that's the definition of unicorn. There's companies like Avast on here because they stayed private for a long time before hitting the gas and getting to that.

Because of the way the equity markets have been recently, there's not a clear path to becoming a unicorn without hitting most of the other markets we tend to think of as startup-y: VC-backed, high growth, scalable into a big market.

If that is the case, there are a few dozen "unicorns" that never had a "hit the gas" period and just grew slowly into billion-dollar companies over decades. I don't see any reason that is not a clear and viable path today, if you have the patience.

I guess in a world where jet.com and Slack exist, it's easy to see many of these as "slow" growth. Avast has been 56% annualized growth over 2008-2014. Getting these valuations typically takes high $X0mil revenue or more, meaning most of them over a 7 year period of annualizing their growth at 50%+. 50%+ growth is pretty impressive, and I don't think there are many people who would think of that as "slow" or "patient".

Not sure you understood me. I'm talking about the hundreds of billion-dollar private companies that aren't on the list referenced here.

Also, while Avast grew into a billion-dollar company via a very rapid growth spurt it took them 20 years to get to the start of that spurt.

For me a startup is a company that is still in "validation" mode for their main business line.

Either validate: - innovative business model

- product

- market

- ...

It usually boils down to businesses that still didn't find a repeatable growth channel (that scales).