The stock market’s biggest ‘unicorn’ failure

Investors have rained cash on Uber, Airbnb and other unprofitable companies.

Any one of these 15 money-losing companies could become the stock market’s biggest ‘unicorn’ failure ever.

David Rush holds a Guinness world record for cramming 100 candles into his mouth and lighting them. 

Sandeep Singh Kaila spun a basketball on a toothbrush for a record 1 minute and 8.15 seconds. Neville Sharp emitted a 112.4 decibel burp.

If those zany stunts can make it into the Guinness Book of World Records, there should be a category for something really important — the world’s biggest startup company failure.

There is certainly no shortage of contenders for this dubious honor.

Before 2015, the biggest bankruptcies (by funding) were Solyndra ($1.2 billion), Abound Solar ($614 million), and Better Place ($675 million). 

WebVan got a lot of publicity when it received $275 million in venture capital funding and failed in 2001 after three years of operation. More recently, Theranos received $500 million in venture capital funding and was a well-publicized disaster, with CEO Elizabeth Holmes and president Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani both convicted of multiple counts of fraud.

Those failures are large, but the cumulative losses of many startups that have not yet gone bankrupt are orders of magnitude larger. 

The table below shows the funds raised by the 15 biggest money-losing startups in the U.S. Cumulatively they raised $93.8 billion in startup funds and have lost $135.1 billion.

Only one of these 15 companies has ever had a profitable quarter — Airbnb had a $378 million profit on $2.1 billion in revenue in the second quarter of 2022. 

All of the other startups in the table have recent losses that exceed 10% of revenue and most exceed 30%.

Any hopeful arguments that profitability is just around the corner ring hollow when every company is at least nine years old and two are more than 20 years old. 

At some point, investors will say, “Enough is enough” and realize that it is a sunk-cost fallacy to throw good money after bad.

Eleven of the 15 companies in the table have raised more money than was raised by any bankrupt startup. 

The two biggest losers so far are Uber and WeWork.

So far, Uber has cumulative losses of $31.7 billion and WeWork $20.7 billion, with no end in sight. Uber’s stock price is down about 35% from its 52-week high. WeWork is down 71% and is now officially a penny stock.

Losses have to be financed and it is increasingly difficult for these companies to do so. 

Uber has cumulative losses of $31.7 billion  and WeWork $20.7 billion. Most of these so-called unicorn startups have seen their share prices fall more than 50% in the past year, and many of these stocks are down more than 90%. 

Most of these so-called unicorn startups have seen their share prices fall more than 50% in the past year, and many of these stocks are down more than 90%. WeWork isn’t the only unicorn turning into a penny stock.

These stock-price declines will make it increasingly difficult and expensive to issue more stock in order to raise funds to cover ongoing losses. Meanwhile, rising interest rates are increasing the cost of servicing existing debt and making it difficult and expensive to issue even more debt.

Many unicorns will surely soon go bankrupt or be acquired at fire-sale prices. A failure of Uber or WeWork would be 10 times larger than the previous records for lost venture-capital funding.

A wave of unicorn failures would send tremors through financial markets, but it is unlikely that the federal government would use a “too-big-too-fail” excuse to intervene.

Although the startups in the table are U.S. companies, unicorn startups in other countries have similar problems: European startups (Delivery Hero DHER, -0.90%, Deliveroo ROO, –2.44%, and Wise WISE, -0.78% ); Chinese ones (Didi DIDIY, -5.50%, Kuaishou 1024, -3.44%, Billi Billi , and Pinduoduo PDD, -2.60% ); Indian ones (Ola , Paytm , and Zomato 543320, -1.29% ), and Singaporean ones (Grab and SEA ) also have multi-billion dollar cumulative losses. 

New records among unicorn companies will likely soon be set all over the world — but they won’t be as benign as records for candle stuffing, basketball spinning, and burping.


This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of overwrite.ai and its owners.

Jeffrey Lee Funk and Gary Smith writes for Market Watch.

This story has been published from an article on 14th September 2022, without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.


For informative and light-hearted news and views on the world of real estate, follow overwrite.ai on Instagram and LinkedIn, and keep up-to-date with our weekly NewsBites blog.


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Top 10 Most Cringeworthy Real Estate Typos

Everyone makes typos. Even the best writers get caught out. But when real estate agents are entrusted to sell properties worth millions of dollars, there really is no excuse for not paying attention to the smallest detail. 

Especially with the range of technologies out there that can help. Some blunders you simply can’t ignore. 

The ones that cause clients to doubt an agent’s professionalism, and reflect poorly on the agency they represent. These typos are very awkward because they are so very public.

One place where these awkward misprints are usually found is in a property’s public listing description.

Any experienced agent will tell you that the property writeup is a critical part of the listing process. An engaging description will not only set you apart from other agents and their marketing. It will serve to hook prospective leads and set you up with that all-important client relationship.

We’ve assembled a list of the most common slip-ups found in real estate write-ups.

Forget embarrassing Typos: use an AI writing assistant

Cut To Bloopers

1. SEPERATE …

Don’t be the reason to build a wall between you and your client – it should be ‘separate’

2. ACCOMODATION …

It’s a mouthful alright – it should be ‘accommodation’

3. FORMALLY…

Remember who said it first – it should be ‘formerly‘ 

4. PRINCIPLE…

Principles are for theoretical physicists. For foremost features – it should be ‘principal‘

5. DUEL …

Let’s hope there are no fights to settle – it should be ‘dual’

6. SORT AFTER …

If you want to remain in demand, don’t make this mistake – it should be ‘sought-after’

7. STAINLESS STEAL …

Best to not get in trouble with the law – it should be ‘steel’

8. INDEPENDANT …

Sloppy errors will have you singled out – it should be ‘independent’

9. EXTENTION …

Is this really the ‘extent’ of your spelling skills? – it should be ‘extension’

10. VOLTED …

You could be in for a shock if you get this one wrong – when it should be ‘vaulted’

Saving Face

Whilst we’re all human and make mistakes, clients are within their rights to expect their agent to cross every ‘t’ and dot every ‘i’ when transacting their home.

Sometimes the typos or grammos go unnoticed but many of them do not.

Although they may appear trivial, research has shown they can have a real impact on your credibility as a professional agent. There are plenty of other agents a client can choose from so why give them an excuse to shop around.

Grammar Rules in Real Estate

Real-estate agents better take out that red pen. An article in The Wall Street Journal quoted that:

“It’s not just English teachers who notice misspellings in luxury-home listings; typos and missing commas can slow sales and drag down prices.

An analysis of listings priced at $1 million and up shows that “perfect” listings—written in full sentences without spelling or grammatical errors—sell three days faster and are 10% more likely to sell for more than their list price.”

Sanette Tanaka
Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Write better, read better, sell faster

And for the estate agents reading this, there are some great efficiency tools to help you. Intelligently automated writing assistants like overwrite.ai mean agents no longer have to worry about silly typos or bad grammar. The agent enters the key property particulars using the intuitive, user-friendly platform, and the property description is created in seconds.


For informative and light-hearted news and views on the world of real estate, follow overwrite.ai on Instagram and LinkedIn, and keep up-to-date with our weekly NewsBites blog.


overwrite.ai | the AI writing assistant for estate agents | Sign up for your Free 7 Day Trial.