“The unicorns are multiplying, but if Andreessen Horowitz is right, the highflying venture capital community will have cause for concern when the inevitable thinning of the herd takes place,” according to a July 2, 2015 article in The New York Times.

“The unicorns, of course, are the 60-odd technology start-ups that have taken investments valuing them at more than $1 billion each…Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital giant, disagrees…The firm released the document — ‘U.S. Tech Funding: What’s Going On’ — to the public, and it is worth a look, not just for the debate over whether a bubble exists but also because it leads indirectly to the fate of the unicorns and the eventual fallout.

The presentation is chock-full of statistics justifying high valuations: E-commerce is only 6 percent of retail revenue in the United States, so there is room to grow. Four billion people are online compared with 40 million in 1995. And technology funding as a percentage of gross domestic product is only 2.6 percent of the economy compared with 10.8 percent in 1999, so the market is not flooded with cash.”

Read the full article
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/02/business/dealbook/a-venture-capital-giant-says-bubble-what-bubble.html