Skip to content

Investment Insights: Top 3 Industries for New Unicorns (2019–2021)

This SQL query shows a detailed analysis of new unicorn companies formed between 2019 and 2021. This report identifies and examines the three industries with the most significant growth, determined by the number of emerging unicorn companies per industry, per year, during this period. The following sections will highlight the top-performing industries by year, offering key insights derived from the number of new unicorns and their average valuation. This retrospective analysis provides valuable context for understanding recent market trends and the factors driving high-value emerging companies.

dates:

  • company_id: A unique ID for the company.
  • date_joined: The date that the company became a unicorn.
  • year_founded: The year that the company was founded.

funding:

  • company_id: A unique ID for the company.
  • valuation: Company value in US dollars.
  • funding: The amount of funding raised in US dollars.
  • select_investors: A list of key investors in the company.

industries:

  • company_id: A unique ID for the company.
  • industry: The industry that the company operates in.

companies:

  • company_id: A unique ID for the company.
  • company: The name of the company.
  • city: The city where the company is headquartered.
  • country: The country where the company is headquartered.
  • continent: The continent where the company is headquartered.
Spinner
DataFrameas
df
variable

--This CTE counts the number of unicorns by year (2019, 2020,and 2021) for each industry and that industries valuation for each year
WITH A as(SELECT i.industry, COUNT(i.industry) AS num_unicorns, 
EXTRACT(YEAR FROM d.date_joined::TIMESTAMP) AS year, ROUND(AVG(f.valuation/1000000000.0),2) AS average_valuation_billions  
FROM industries AS i
INNER JOIN dates AS d
ON d.company_id = i.company_id
INNER JOIN funding AS f
ON f.company_id = i.company_id
WHERE EXTRACT(YEAR FROM d.date_joined::TIMESTAMP) IN (2019, 2020, 2021)
GROUP BY i.industry, EXTRACT(YEAR FROM d.date_joined::TIMESTAMP)),

--This CTE ranks the industries for the years 2019, 2020, 2021 based on the number of unicorns for that industry for that year
B AS (SELECT A.industry, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY A.year ORDER BY A.num_unicorns DESC) as rn, A.year, A.num_unicorns, A.average_valuation_billions
	FROM A)
	
--This query selects the top three ranked industries by year (2019-2021) and orders them by year and then amount of unicorns in descending order
SELECT
   B.industry,
   B.year,
   B.num_unicorns,
   B.average_valuation_billions
FROM B
WHERE B.rn < 4
ORDER BY year DESC, num_unicorns DESC