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Welcome to my small Friday roundup of things that I would have otherwise had to miss.

We’re looking at three things this morning. First, revenue growth ahead of . Second, the . And third, I did more public talking than usual this week, which I am supposed to share with you.

We’ll proceed in order, let’s go!

Incorta’s Revenue Growth

Hundreds of companies raise capital every month, making Incorta’s recent Series C merely one more round. Why should we care about it? Because its investor list is fascinating, and the company actually shared useful growth metrics.

Starting with the investors, the firm’s new $30 million round (check its , data via Crunchbase) was led by . also took part. But so too did , a venture arm of , and , venture capital team. (M12, GV, and Kleiner have led previous rounds into the company.)

Microsoft and Google in the same round? That got me thinking. Even more, one of those partners got a shoutout in the firm’s release, with Incorta saying that it is “one of twelve startups that Microsoft is actively promoting and selling through its AppSource certification.”

There are perks to taking money from companies that have huge sales channels.

Next, revenue growth. Incorta noted in its release that it posted “284 [percent] year-over-year growth in revenue during the trailing twelve months.” I’d like to thank the company for sharing a revenue number, and not a gross bookings metric. And, for giving a clear timeframe for the claimed growth. Many companies provide wish and wash in equal parts, making their pronouncements unclear at best.

Founded in 2013 and based in San Francisco, what does Incorta do? It helps companies build analytics dashboards quickly (), helping its customers enjoy “analytics without the overhead.” As a regular consumer of all sorts of analytics tooling, I must say that would be neat.

SmileDirectClub’s IPO Filing

As it turns out, if you dramatically inflate your sales and marketing spend, your company may grow more quickly! Write that down, that’s going to become conventional wisdom before you know it.

Jokes aside, , the Nashville-based player in the see-through-teeth-corrector business . The firm’s revenue growth is huge, its operating costs are spiking, and its losses are going up. This makes SmileDirect a very normal 2019 IPO candidate.

Inside the S-1 we see the company’s H1 2019 revenue reaching $373.5 million, up from $175.1 million in the year-ago period. Sales and marketing costs grew from $86.5 million to $209.1 million from the first half of 2018 to the first half of 2019. And, the firm’s net loss grew from $33.6 million to $52.8 million over the same time period.

SmileDirect while a private company, including cash from venture capital players and .

As a company, SmileDirectClub has greater than 100 percent revenue growth at scale. That’s always going to entice investment. But as a word of caution, its already-public rival took for lackluster forward guidance. If SmileDirect can dodge that shadow, this IPO could be a big one.

Podcasts, Shows

I hate promoting what I do because it feels cheap and too self-affirming. But, I spent way too much time and energy this week talking to not share it. So, here’s the list:

• : The Equity crew went to Boston to chat with one of our favorite nerds. It was a super-fun, super-fast paced chat.
• : The Equity crew put together an on-the-fly episode looking at The We Company’s IPO filing, working hard to parse the numbers beneath the hype.
• : The fine folks over at TWiT had me on this week to chat The We Company’s S-1. A video version of the podcast can be found . (I’m at the 39-minute mark, and apologize for my camera placement.)
• : I went on to riff about Cloudflare’s IPO filing and SmileDirectClub, keep your eyes peeled for the clip if you want to see me in a shirt with buttons and a collar.

And that’s that. Have a lovely Friday everyone, and make sure to to stay in the loop. Thanks for reading!

Illustration: .

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Don’t worry, I’m not cross with you. It’s merely that there are so many unicorns in the market today — they stampede by the hundred in 2019 — that they are impossible to keep tabs on.

In fact, so many firms now make the cut that we’ve gotten into the habit of torturing the word ‘unicorn’ to mean more than what it was originally tasked to describe. As we wrote recently, there are undercorns now, and decacorns. Toss in minotaurs and horses and the inevitable centacorns and see, we’re all bored.

Paraphrasing Asimov, successive shocks lead to decreasing impact. So has the phrase unicorn lost all meaning. As I the other day, it now mostly means “middle-aged startup.” Even our redefinition of the word “startup” allowed for firms to be worth several billion and still claim the title, though that might have been an error.

In today’s world of super- and hypergiant rounds, it’s not impossible to put together a unicorn. And people sure are doing it.

So, Now What

Unicorn is now only useful as a valuation-descriptor. It no longer implies something rare.

So, what we need is either a redefinition of a unicorn to make it rarer. Or, we need an entirely new concept. Regardless of if we change up what unicorn itself means, or invent a new word, it’s become clear what we need to add to the mix to really tease out the exceptional companies from the merely very good.

Profits.

, before its IPO, was profitable and growing like hell. , we recently learned, is profitable and growing as well. Can you name another company worth $1 billion or more that is growing and profitable? I can’t. That means they are rare.

and I chatted about this on Equity yesterday (), and this was our general point of agreement (). Profit is what really makes you rare. Not just a high valuation. There’s enough money flying around to print the latter by the dozen. Earning the former? Now’s that’s legendary and hard to find.

Just like a unicorn.

Illustration: .