https:\/\/twitter.com\/BenedictEvans\/status\/628636561601474560<\/p>\n
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<\/a> looking curve of Apple (a model of saturation in a population, an s-curve which will dramatically plateau).<\/p>\n Plenty of smart people talk about Steve Ballmer’s time as CEO at Microsoft as a failure<\/a>\u00a0but I really wish I could fail like that. I watch enterprise software, and Microsoft has been turning in organic<\/em> double digit growth in multiple billion dollar plus businesses year after year for over 10 years now. That’s<\/em> 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”.<\/p>\n Microsoft catching IBM in revenues is what really strikes me, and is perhaps what Benedict was referring to.\u00a0Outsourcing is not a good place to be right now.<\/p>\n Our current fetish for outsize valuations is certainly interesting – the companies we call unicorns are valued<\/em> 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<\/a>).<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I leave the last word to Marc Benioff.<\/p>\n All my friends want to be Unicorns. Many are just not ready. Get ready for some dead Unicorns. pic.twitter.com\/MOlOHSq9uO<\/a><\/p>\n — Marc Benioff (@Benioff) July 28, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n