In China, a Dot-Com Déjà-Vu
Welcome to the land of ‘unicorns’ and super-cheap meals. The rewards are rich, as are valuations. And the risks are rising. How it will play out depends upon whom you ask.
We’ve seen it before: the crazy spending, the stratospheric valuations. Twenty years later, it looks like the dot-com boom all over again, but this time the players are much bigger—and Chinese.
A Beijing-based startup that lets consumers order coffee via smartphones raced into so-called unicorn territory—a $1 billion valuation—in seven months from launch. The value of another firm, billed as an “Uber for trucks,” has soared to 300 times 2017 revenue; Uber Technologies Inc. itself is worth only about 10 times revenue.
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