In the "startup world" it is no secret that signaling matters. With opaque benchmarks, it can be difficult for a startup to determine how they stack-up relative to their peers. Success often comes in the form of hot awards, prominent investors, and coverage from mainstream news outlets. Investors are anointing hyper growth companies as "Unicorns" at a rapid rate.

Understandably so, startups have become fixated with hanging their prized unicorn status on the wall to share their success. But Unicorns are fake. Always have been and always will be. Looking at the data, unicorns may resemble a different mythical character: Icarus.