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May 31, 2016

Mourning the demise of the privately owned billion-dollar company

A eulogy for all the dead unicorns

My name is Buck Stops and I head up a mutual fund with more than $90 bn in assets under management. Like many of you here today, I owned stakes in several unicorns. And now I’m here to pay tribute to those that are no longer with us. Hendrix, Winehouse and Cobain all died at 27; all were mourned for being taken too soon. But the unicorns I’m referencing departed when far younger. Many were scarcely a glint in a start-up founder’s eye five years ago. And in five years’ time,

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