Decacorn

Definitions

1. A privately held company valued at $10 billion or more. When 'unicorn' started feeling common, the mythological creatures got bigger.

   In plain English: A startup worth over $10 billion — an even rarer and more impressive version of a unicorn.

2. Part of an increasingly absurd mythology of startup valuation tiers: unicorn ($1B), decacorn ($10B), hectocorn ($100B). The inflation of these terms mirrors the inflation of startup valuations themselves — what was once miraculous became merely expected.

   Example: 'Stripe was a decacorn for years before going public. The word exists because 'unicorn' stopped being special when 1,200 companies qualified.'

   Source: terminology inflation

Related Terms

• Unicorn
• Series A / B / C
• IPO