Unicorn

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A superficially intriguing idea, as long as your powers of disbelief-suspension remain strong and your conception of your own cognitive dissonance weak. But, fundamentally, a stupid idea, as is evidenced by the fact that if one ever did evolve — and the fossil record suggests it did not — it didn’t last long enough to make an impression an anyone but children and hippies.

Also, a tech startup with supernatural power to defy or even repudiate the established canon of financial analysis, laws of physics etc.

The metaphor bears unusually close examination. As long as there are willing customers able to durably suspend their disbelief — that this time is, in fact, not different; that a permanently cashflow-negative enterprise must eventually hit the skids however patient are its financiers and those pouring their own capital into its leaking bucket — those telling the unicorn’s tale, whether they be children’s authors or equity research analysts, are free to weave their magical stories for the wonderment of others and enrichment of themselves.

See also