The wave of unicorn IPOs

And an unprecedented number of the beasts have either just offered their shares to the world through initial public offerings ( s)—Lyft did so on March 29th—or are gearing up to do so, as Uber will on May 10th. There are three explanations for this population boom: an ideology that sees the rapid creation of companies with very large user bases as the best—possibly the only—business strategy available; an infrastructure that makes it ever easier to follow through on this belief; and a climate in which, until recently, there was not much pressure to take these new companies public. A number of public listings last year showed that public markets have a big appetite for tech shares.

Source: www.economist.com