In Silicon Valley, a "unicorn" is a company with a billion-dollar valuation. Its name implies how rare it should be to reach that status.
But as more money pours into startups — a prominent trend over the last few years — more startups are achieving "unicorn" status.
Unicorns hit a fever pitch in 2015, when 42 startups achieved billion-dollar valuations. Yet as the data shows, becoming a unicorn wasn't quite as easy in 2016.
For the purposes of this list, Business Insider asked PitchBook Data to pull a list of US-based companies that reached a $1 billion-plus valuation in 2016. We then ranked them from least to most valuable based on their post-money valuations.
Here are the companies that became unicorns in 2016:
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Compass
Founded: 2012
Valuation: $1 billion
What it does: While Compass functions like a traditional broker, the company's promise is to use technology to reduce the time and friction of buying and selling a house or apartment.
In July, Compass released an app designed to replace "stale" quarterly market reports with more dynamic information. In the app, buyers and sellers can search by things like neighborhood, number of bedrooms, price range, and so on, but they can also look at more advanced metrics, like year-over-year analysis of median price per square foot, days on the market, and negotiability.
SMS Assist
Founded: 2003
Valuation: $1 billion
What it does: The Chicago-based technology company provides software to help property managers supervise things like electrical work, snow-plow contractors, and landscaping. The "no-glamour" company allows property managers to keep tabs on multiple properties at once, and it has already signed on customers like Family Dollar and Colony Starwood Homes.
ForeScout
Founded: 2000
Valuation: $1 billion
What it does: ForeScout's technology helps companies monitor all the devices that are connected to their network at any given time. For many large enterprises, the number of devices can easily run into the millions with things like PCs, employees' mobile devices, virtual machines used for testing new applications, and now internet of things devices — and that can make it it hard for network administrators to keep tabs on everything happening on their company's network.
ForeScout's CEO said that when the company first runs its software with a client, it typically finds 20-30% more devices on the network than the client's IT team expected.
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