If you really want to become a wise person, challenge the unicorn of desires, and comprehend the knowledge of the master, then you have to find your teacher-mentor - this is a guru. It lies on the fine line between your subconscious and the astral plane. In the astral plane, the cutest, calmest and wisest creature is considered to be the unicorn. If you want to gain wisdom and the same patience, you need to know how to call a unicorn, make contact with it and after that, you will achieve the necessary knowledge.
If you have made up your mind and want his favor and teaching, you must prepare. To do this, prepare your consciousness so that you can work with subtle matters of the spiritual. But for this, you will need to take a special course on leaving your body and your own consciousness. There is a lot of information on esotericism. Read, prepare, and you can try to summon a unicorn at home. Practice meditation daily, this will make it easier for you to move on to difficult things.
How to Summon a Wishing Unicorn During the Day
Since you are still new to this business, do not go out into the astral plane on your own for the first time without special preparation and lack of knowledge. Before leaving the material world for the astral one, you need to consult with a person who already has such experience. You can even take your first trip together. Let him take you on this unusual “road” and show you another, otherworldly world.
One should not forget that the astral plane is neither hell nor heaven. This is the subconscious world. Those creatures that live in this world are not always friendly to guests who look into their world. Some of them will be very unhappy with your intervention. Before you go into this world, you must understand that only with pure and good intentions can you get there. It is also necessary to be able to stand up for yourself when entering another world of creatures.
Before your journey into the world of endless sensory information, free yourself from all fuss, be calm and relaxed if you want to get answers to your questions. If negative energy leaves you, not only will you not receive answers, but you may also suffer from energy beings, calling the unicorn of desires may fail. He feels all this very subtly. So be prepared for anything. You can even clear your karma before going on a long journey. For these reasons, you need to be clean and bright in your soul. If your energy is not completely cleared, then you can forget about how to summon a unicorn. He just won't meet you and you won't achieve the wisdom you need.
Surely you know this Aesop fable:
“The tortoise and the hare were arguing which of them was faster. They appointed a time and place for the competition and went their separate ways. But the hare, relying on its natural agility, did not try to run, but lay down near the road and fell asleep. But the turtle understood that it was moving slowly, and therefore ran without a break. So she overtook the sleeping hare and received the victorious reward.”
In short, the fable shows that work often takes precedence over natural abilities when they are neglected.
But what does this have to do with unicorns?
The key business line of the venture capital company Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), founded in 1980 and today with a fund of $1,000,000,000, is investing in so-called “unicorns”. The term was coined in 2013 by venture capitalist and founder of Cowboy Ventures, Aileen Lee. She called companies that have reached a billion-dollar capitalization “unicorns.”
About 30,000 new businesses appear annually, but only a small part of them (10-15) will be valued at $1,000,000,000 or more.
Since 2003, 39 such companies have appeared, the main directions of most of which are the Internet and software. IVP was lucky enough to invest in 7 of them.
There are 5 signs that this is a unicorn company:
- Big market
- Great team
- Differentiated Product
- Hyper growth
- High retention rate
Most entrepreneurs believe that growth is what really matters, and all efforts and resources should be directed towards it. Venture capitalists believe that retention is important in the long run: does your product provide high level user engagement and enduring interest.
Let's illustrate this idea with an example:
Let's say there is company A (graph on the left) with fairly rapid growth: 10,000,000 users per month. Their monthly retention rate is 90%, which is pretty good. After 3 years, if you look at the graph, they reach their limit of just under 100,000,000 users. This is where their growth practically stops.
Now consider company B (graph on the right). Growth is 2 times slower (5,000,000 users per month), but the retention rate is 99%. As a result, they overtook Company A: the number of users after 3 months reached 150,000,000 and continued to increase at a very rapid pace.
The table below reflects these two different situations:
A company can have either slow growth (low growth) or fast growth (high growth). The retention rate can be either low (low retention) or high (high retention).
If you have slow growth and low retention, you will get nowhere (sloth). If you have fast growth, as in the example with company A, but a low retention rate, you will very quickly become exhausted (“hare” - hare). If you have high retention but slow growth, you will slowly but surely reach your goal (tortoise). And finally, if you have miraculously With both high retention and rapid growth, you have the potential to become a unicorn.
Now let's look at some real examples.
Plaxo is one of the Silicon Valley companies founded more than 10 years ago. The company developed quite quickly: 4 years after its founding, the number of users reached 10,000,000 users, which was a very steep figure at that time. It was somewhat of an annoying service, bombarding users with requests every day to update information in their address book.
A year later, LinkedIn appeared. It initially developed more slowly than Plaxo, but eventually:
Growth in the number of LinkedIn clients from 2003 to 2013.
Vertical scale: total number of clients (millions)
These graphs show that in 2005, Plaxo was much more successful than LinkedIn. Now, LinkedIn is beyond any competition - the company is valued at $22,000,000,000.
It was, as you might have guessed, a case of the “tortoise” and the “hare.”
So, even if you are currently far behind your competitor, focusing on your retention rate will help you build a much larger business in the long run.
Now a couple of more recent examples:
Top graph: the number of unique visitors to the Viddy service per day.
Bottom graph: Number of daily active users (percentage of monthly active users).
Viddy was a very popular app back in the day, kind of like Instagram for videos. Viddy's daily active users (DAU), just a month after launch, numbered over 3,000,000. But while Viddy did grow its user base quickly, its retention rate was very low. Soon there were fewer and fewer new users. The number of daily active users decreased, indicating low engagement. The results were even worse than Company A in the example above. Thus, this is also an example of a “hare” company.
And finally, a great example of a “unicorn” is WhatsApp. In the first 4 years, the number of their users grew to 400,000,000. But more importantly, 72% of the service's monthly active users use it daily. This is much more common than with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat.
Graph on the left: WhatsApp's unusually high user growth in the first years after launch compared to Facebook, Twitter and Skype.
Graph on the right: WhatsApp's incredibly high user engagement rate. Number of daily active users (percentage of monthly active users). Comparison with Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter.
It is quite obvious that it is better to be a “tortoise” than a “hare”. However, if you can become a unicorn, that's even better. These are the companies you want to invest in.
Habit Formation
When talking about a good retention rate, venture capitalists expect to see the following 4 things:
- Great product(Trigger)
- High Frequency of Use (Action)
- Infinite Variability (Reward)
- Increasing the value of a product over time (Investment)
This is almost exactly the same as . You have a trigger, often the result of a great product; action - users interact with the product daily; reward - here infinite variability comes to the rescue; and the investment phase - what ensures high value of the product to the user over time.
Let's look at each of these 4 points in more detail.
1. Great product: eliminate the user's "pain"
The best entrepreneurs focus on solving user problems. They strive to create a product that they really need. And this product must also be authentic. The most successful businesses are often created by entrepreneurs satisfying their own needs and desires and solving their own problems. They know a lot about their market and truly understand their customers.
One example of such a company is Dropbox, founded by Drew Houston. One day he was on a bus from Boston to New York. It turned out that he had left the flash drive at home and could not complete his work. At that moment, he came up with the idea of creating a cloud storage service, which was ultimately embodied in the Dropbox product.
Similarly, the idea of Facebook came to its founder Mark Zuckerberg, and the idea of Uber came to Travis Kalanick.
2. High frequency of use
You must create a product that will be used as often as possible.
In the matrix below you can see how often people interact with each category of app and how long they use each one:
Vertical scale: frequency of use (once a week)
Horizontal scale: maintaining user attention for 90 days
Obviously, everyone wants a product to have high frequency of use and high retention rates. However, the apps that really achieve high frequency usage are those that need to be used every day. These are applications from the categories communication, social media, entertainment, social games, etc.
Venture capitalists often give mobile apps a “first screen test.” They want to know if the product is important enough to people and if they will use it often enough to put it on the home screen of their smartphone. Screen mobile device has limited space and can accommodate no more than 20-30 applications (except for cases where users sort similar applications into folders). Your goal is to become one of these services on your home screen.
The reason frequency of use is so important has to do with the concept of the “forgetting curve.” The author of this concept is the 19th century German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus. The point is quite simple: the bulk of information is forgotten in the first few hours after memorization.
Vertical scale: knowledge stored in memory (in %).
Horizontal scale: repetition 1, repetition 2, repetition 3, repetition 4, repetition 5.
Based on the Ebbinghaus curve, he proposed an effective learning technique that involved repeating information multiple times at certain intervals.
Remember yourself at school. Many of us began reviewing the material covered in class only the day before the test. As a result, the results were generally unsatisfactory. We simply forgot the lesson we learned 8 weeks ago.
The Ebbinghaus technique involves repeating the material many times immediately after studying it. People who participate in world memory championships are able to memorize an entire deck of cards and more this way.
What does all this have to do with startups? If someone downloads your app, say an app in the travel category, and doesn't use it on the first or second day, you can't expect them to remember it six months/year later. You must ensure repetition again and again.
One of IVP’s portfolio companies, Care.com, does this better than anyone. Within five days of registering on this portal, you receive 10 emails from them. Despite the fact that the user has already registered and paid, the company also wants to ensure that the user is sufficiently involved in the service, which is why it sends these letters. Yes, it feels a little like spam, but if you don't do it, there's a good chance they'll lose the user when it comes time to renew their subscription after 3 months.
3. Infinite variability
Most apps with high retention rates are those that are constantly changing. That's why we constantly check the weather, news, messages. Users should want to return to your service because they are interested in what new things they will see there.
An example here is Flipboard, a service that combines social networks and news resources. This site is a direct demonstration of constant variability, thanks to which users constantly return to the service.
Games on social networks have the greatest variability. Below you can see a graph showing the number of monthly active users of Zynga's online games. As we can observe, this number decreases over time:
The largest yellow segment on the graph represents users of the game FarmVille. Initially, this game had a huge user engagement, but over time they got used to it and, due to the lack of changes, quickly lost interest.
Thus, it is important to make sure that you monetize your product frequently within the first few months and/or release new games.
The game Draw Something is another example with a similar story. What's interesting is that in addition to its high growth, it also had one of the highest retention rates of daily active users. People returned to the game 5-10 times a day for the first few days. However, even though it had high retention and high growth, its volatility was finite - people didn't want to play it after a month or two.
4. Increasing product value over time
The longer a user interacts with a service, the more he invests his time and other resources into it, the more important it becomes to him.
A great example of this is Dropbox, as well as Evernote. Below you can see their famous graph, which resembles a smile. It shows the statistics of returning users:
Horizontal scale: time elapsed since registration (1 year, 2 years, 3 years)
Evernote noticed that once a user signed up for their service, usage rates dropped sharply within the first three months. However, over time, after about a year or two, the frequency of use began to increase again. The reason is that users were starting to get used to it. They invested more in the service, which made it more valuable to them.
The right metrics
When approaching venture capitalists, what metrics you show them is critical. It's great if you have the same schedule as Evernote. However, in most cases, companies do not start with such good metrics.
Often developers mobile applications in this case they say something like: “We have 200,000,000 downloads.” These are impressive statistics for the press, but nothing more. It doesn't really mean anything. This is the same as if someone said: “This is how many people have visited my site in the last 10 years.”
The focus of your attention should be shifted towards active users - people interacting with the service on a daily basis. Facebook does this very well:
In the last quarter of 2013 alone, the daily number of Facebook users was 757,000,000 people. This is a very good metric of user activity for venture capitalists.
The second thing you have to show them is the retention rate of the cohort. And you can do this using the graph below:
Vertical scale: % of users returning monthly
Horizontal scale: time elapsed since registration (0-12 months)
User churn is initially high and then gradually decreases. This suggests that remaining users are more likely to continue using the service.
Over time, the company manages to cope better with user churn. With each new cohort, user churn at each stage of their lifecycle becomes less and less.
This chart was created by David Scott for SAS companies. You can use it for any type of business (web, SAS, etc.) to demonstrate how many people return to your service or continue to pay.
IN in this example data is presented for those registered in January 2011 (lower blue line). After 12 months, 55% of them were still active. Over time, the company's performance became increasingly better.
With another graph from Mixpanel, you can show your users' engagement levels. It is especially suitable for mobile applications. This graph shows how often or how much time users spend in your app—not only whether they return to it, but whether they dedicate time and other resources to it.
Social app usage follows a linear progression; approximately 25% of people use the app only 2 hours a day, 15% use it 3 hours a day, and so on. 20% of addicted users interact with the application more than 8 hours a day.
In this example, about 20% of users spend more than 8 hours a day in the application. It's safe to say that this is an application that calls .
And finally, one of the most important metrics is revenue.
Very often companies focus on profit from the very beginning, and this is what they show to venture capitalists. It can either look really good or really bad. It all depends on whether you dive below what these overall numbers demonstrate.
Below is a graph for a hypothetical company, showing quite good growth arrived:
Vertical scale: income
Below you can see another similar graph, but this one shows the profit of the cohort over a certain period of time. We see that the same users who signed up in January 2012 are still paying the same amount two years later:
Vertical scale: income
Horizontal scale: time period
Thus, we have a revenue model with a high retention rate. This company knows that when they sign up a new user, they will stay with them.
In another similar chart below we see a completely opposite situation. Here, revenue from user cohorts decreases over time:
Vertical scale: income
Horizontal scale: time period
This company is losing its users. The only reason they stay afloat is because they add so many new users every month. But this won't last forever.
So, when thinking about income, try . Strive to become a “turtle” company, and ideally a “unicorn”.
At all times, people believed in the existence of unusual animals. Our ancestors often endowed such creatures not only with an unusual appearance, but also with supernatural abilities. Among the popular mythical animals is the graceful and handsome unicorn.
Who is a unicorn?
In myths, he is one of the most mysterious characters. Unicorn is mythical creature, symbolizing chastity. Outwardly, it is very difficult to confuse him with anyone, because he distinctive feature- a horn coming out of the forehead. In all other respects, he resembles a beautiful graceful horse. The most unusual representatives are a fabulous flying creature and a black unicorn.
Unicorns are considered to be very powerful creatures, capable of easily eluding hunters. Their speed is amazing as they are faster than normal horses. In addition, they can fight with incredible strength and almost always emerge victorious from battles. Unicorns are forced to fight to survive, since their priceless horns are always hunted by many who want to master magic. It is known that the horns of these unusual creatures can save even in cases of poisoning. They are often used in powder form as.
Unicorn - who is he in the Bible?
Even on the pages of Holy Scripture you can notice this creature. However, the unicorn in the Bible and mythical creature have nothing in common. So, spiritual literature says that this is a buffalo, bison or aurochs from ancient Russian chronicles, a wild bull that became extinct centuries ago, which can be considered the ancestor of domestic bulls. Hebrew translations even call this creature a rhinoceros. But no matter what animal it really is, it is obvious that we are not talking about a mythical, but about a real animal that once lived on earth.
Unicorn in mythology
Long-standing myths about unicorns tell about a creature with a horn on its forehead, which was the companion of chaste goddesses. The graceful mythical creatures unicorns were very freedom-loving, but when they met virgin girls, they became submissive and immediately lay down at their feet. It is not easy to catch the dexterous animal, and you can only hold it with the help of a golden bridle. The horn of a magical creature was often credited with miraculous properties.
Do unicorns exist?
It is difficult to unequivocally answer the question of whether unicorns exist in our time and whether they ever lived at all. However, some researchers argue that such creatures actually inhabited the earth. At least, there is an opinion that unicorns lived in Korea and even the rulers of the country rode them. Local scientists provided evidence that shocked the whole world, because previously everyone was sure that the unicorn was only a fictional fairy-tale character.
What does a unicorn look like?
Often the unicorn real life is a creature with the body of a horse and a large horn on its head that grows between its eyes. This horn can be long and straight, and sometimes twisted in a spiral. There are individuals that look not like horses, but like goats with a beard. Sometimes such creatures are depicted with large wings like the mythical Pegasus. Another one distinguishing feature unicorn - thick long mane.
The ancient Persians believed that the unicorn looked like a large three-legged beast, with nine mouths, standing in the middle of the ocean. This creature supposedly protected sea water from various contaminants. The Jews were sure that the unicorn was the size of a mountain, on the slopes of which a whole flock of sheep could fit. The Slavic unicorn is a huge horse of honey color with a large horn, Indrik.
What types of unicorns are there?
There are these types of unicorns:
- European unicorn- heavy, clumsy gray creatures with a small horn - 15-20 centimeters. Very strong, but too slow.
- British- the largest among all species. The creature has the powerful body of a white horse. The horn of the British representative is white with silver.
- Indian– the tail of this creature resembles a lion’s, with a thin tassel at the end. Its horn is long and thin, and has a silver or golden color.
- West- free and wayward horses. They will never approach a person, and if they sense danger, they can attack with their horn. These creatures are very hardy and can cover a long distance in hot weather.
- Rainbow- a very beautiful and rare species. Compared to their body size, they have long legs. They have a white or gray color. It is less common to see a black unicorn. The fur of such creatures is not very thick for the reason that they like to live in warm climates.
- Black– individuals of this species are found among other representatives. Among them there are winged unicorns.
- Winged- They are often called a cross between a unicorn and a hippogriff. However, there are researchers who are confident that this is a completely independent species of animal.
- Unicorn-Demons- the most dangerous of all existing species. They find it difficult to be around people and non-magical creatures. For this reason, they live solitary in difficult forests. It is believed that unicorn blood is very poisonous, and therefore they are never hunted.
- Mirror- one of the most beautiful. The creature's fur fits so tightly to the body that it can create a continuous layer and each hair becomes as if mirror-like. Like a mirror, it can reflect light and the beautiful mirror horn of an animal.
Where did unicorns live?
There are those among us who are interested in where unicorns live. Depending on the species, these or other habitats of mythical creatures are called:
- The smallest unicorns live in dense, remote mid-latitude forests.
- Silver - I live in the densest forests, and try to never catch the eye of people.
- Dark (black) are among the most mysterious. No one knows about their habitats.
- Indians live in the forests of India.
- British ones inhabit the forests of Great Britain.
- Unicorn-Demons live solitarily in dark, damp and necessarily impenetrable forests.
What do unicorns eat?
Whether a creature is fictional or real is not so important; it must feed on something. A mythical unicorn can grow beautiful and strong only if it has a balanced, complete diet, which includes a daily set of feed and supplements that meet the animal’s need for nutrients and biologically active substances. Just like insufficient nutrition, excess nutrition will be harmful to him. Graceful creatures are very fond of eating rosehip inflorescences and other forest gifts.
The Legend of the Unicorn
There is more than one beautiful legend about the unicorn. In Germany there is a belief that the Eingorn animals once lived on their lands. They supposedly lived in the mountain ranges. The Einhorhole cave has survived to this day. Legend says that a witch once lived in that cave, to whom people often turned for help. However, the local cleric did not like this very much and he decided to call her a witch and demand that she be burned.
When he arrived at the cave with the guards, he saw a small hunched woman. Everyone laughed in unison in anticipation of an easy victory. However, suddenly a one-horned animal appeared in front of them. The unicorn bowed to the woman, she climbed onto his back and immediately disappeared. The soldiers tried to catch up with the witch, but the unicorn appeared and then disappeared again. At some point the monk was able to overtake her, but at that moment the ground opened up under him and he fell into a hole.
Books about unicorns
Thanks to interest in these unusual mythical creatures, educational books about unicorns appeared:
- "In Search of Unicorns" by Eslava Galan Juan. The famous Spanish writer invites readers to plunge into the Middle Ages and together find a magical unicorn and try to prepare a healing potion from its horn.
- "Valley of the Unicorns" by Rosie Banks. An interesting story about the adventures of three inseparable girlfriends who find themselves in the Secret Kingdom.
- “Master of the Unicorn Hunt” Anna Malysheva. A fascinating story about a mythical creature from an ancient tapestry that can pose a real threat to anyone who hunts it.
- "Damn Unicorns" Robert Sheckley. The author tells a legend about a one-horned creature with extraordinary magical powers.
Movie about unicorns
The power of the unicorn is also realistically described in films. Among the most popular films about a mythical creature:
- "Voyage of the Unicorn". When the sisters hear their mother's voice, they decide to go on an extraordinary journey with their father. Many adventures await them. The heroes of the film will be able to make friends with gnomes and elves, and also find themselves on a fairy-tale island.
- "The Last Unicorn". The film tells about a magical land where a unicorn lived. This beautiful creature knew the secrets of magic. One day the animal learns that all his relatives have died out and he may be the last unicorn.
- "The Virgin Suicides". The film tells about a family in which 5 teenage girls are growing up. After one of them commits suicide, the others are put under surveillance by local residents.
