--- title: Dinosaurs can be Unicorns too date: 2015-08-05T12:04:02Z modified: 2015-08-05T12:04:02Z permalink: "https://redmonk.com/jgovernor/dinosaurs-can-be-unicorns-too/" type: post status: publish excerpt: "" wpid: 4162 categories: - Uncategorized timestamp: 2015-08-05T12:04:02Z tags: - Uncategorized --- https://twitter.com/BenedictEvans/status/628636561601474560 I don’t exactly know what Benedict Evans meant by his one word comment on this chart, but I found the data interesting because of the frankly incredible ongoing performance of Microsoft, rather that the potentially more [sigmoid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmoid_function) looking curve of Apple (a model of saturation in a population, an s-curve which will dramatically plateau). Plenty of smart people talk about [Steve Ballmer’s time as CEO at Microsoft as a failure](http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2013/12/12/on-steve-ballmer/) but I really wish I could fail like that. I watch enterprise software, and Microsoft has been turning in _organic_ double digit growth in multiple billion dollar plus businesses year after year for over 10 years now. _That’s_ impressive execution. Microsoft servers and tools business is perhaps a triceratops – a dinosaur with more horns than a unicorn. Has Microsoft succeeded at everything? No – but show me the company that has. Execution is really hard – thus the idea of “unicorns”. Microsoft catching IBM in revenues is what really strikes me, and is perhaps what Benedict was referring to. Outsourcing is not a good place to be right now. Our current fetish for outsize valuations is certainly interesting – the companies we call unicorns are _valued_ at over a billion dollars, but the term says nothing whatsoever about revenues. These valuations are based purely on private, somewhat illiquid markets (to be fair a lot of smart people think Mark Cuban is wrong about [the bubble](http://blogmaverick.com/2015/03/04/why-this-tech-bubble-is-worse-than-the-tech-bubble-of-2000/)). When I think of dinosaurs I think of incredibly successful life forms, that thrived over hundreds of millions of years. It is mankind that looks more like a blip. Maybe that’s what Benedict meant? A dinosaur offers sustained performance over time. I suspect of course, that’s not what he meant. I leave the last word to Marc Benioff. > All my friends want to be Unicorns. Many are just not ready. Get ready for some dead Unicorns. [pic.twitter.com/MOlOHSq9uO](http://t.co/MOlOHSq9uO) > > — Marc Benioff (@Benioff) [July 28, 2015](https://x.com/Benioff/status/626121677311619072?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) Some disclosure: Dell, IBM, Microsoft are clients and I am certainly not a stock picker.