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Wayflyer, the Irish start-up that has just achieved unicorn status with a $1 billion-plus valuation, may be scaling at a fast rate but it is no rush to go public.
Speaking to The Irish Times, founders Aidan Corbett and Jack Pierse said that given how much the company is worth, an initial public offering (IPO) is likely at some stage but not in the immediate future.
“I think once you get to the valuation we are now at you can’t really account for an acquisition being the probable exit because you get too big. Very large exits involving companies worth over $1 billion (€900 million) happen but they are relatively rare,” said Mr Corbett, the Wayflyer’s chief executive.
“As an independent company, an IPO is usually the ultimate destination but it not on our horizon for a long time. We’re still just 22 months on from launch so I think there is a long way to go before we’d be ready for that,” he added.
Founded in September 2019, Wayflyer has achieved a $1.6 billion valuation in just 2.5 years following its latest $150 million fundraise. This is by far the fastest any Irish company has achieved unicorn status.
In doing so, Wayflyer becomes the sixth home-grown tech company to officially receive the accolade after Intercom, Workhuman, Fenergo, LetsGetChecked and Flipdish, which became a unicorn just a few weeks ago.
Unicorns
Stripe, which was founded by Patrick and John Collison in 2010, was originally established in San Francisco, although it is now co-headquartered in Dublin. It is valued at $95 billion.
Speaking to The Irish Times in December 2020, John Collison said it was entirely plausible that Stripe could be established locally now, something that was deemed impossible back in the day.
Mr Corbett echoed such a view saying that its latest fundraise “send out the message that it is eminently possible for Irish entrepreneurs to create unicorns from Ireland. ”
With a number of other Irish companies expected to also hit a $1 billion-plus valuation relatively soon, it may no longer be quite so newsworthy when such an event happens in the near future.
Indeed, so much many tech companies have become unicorns in recent years that there is now a call to focus on decacorns – that is start-ups valued at $10 billion or more – instead.
There were 32 decacorns globally last year according to Crunchbase. This compares to between 670 and 750 unicorns.