Why You Should Build a Camel, Not a Unicorn
For the past decade, the startup world has been obsessed with unicorns - companies chasing $1B+ valuations with blitzscale speed. It made sense in a zero-interest-rate world flooded with capital, but that era is over. The rules have changed, and most founders are still playing an outdated game.
If you’re building in emerging markets (as Dubai), with conservative industries, or without unlimited VC firepower, you need a different model. You need to build a camel.
Camels survive and thrive in brutal conditions. They go long distances without water, adapt to volatility, and are built for endurance, not speed. Camel startups follow the same principle: they grow steadily, spend wisely, and prioritize survivability over hype.
Blitzscale is broken
Unicorn thinking is rooted in speed. Raise fast, burn fast, grow fast. Subsidize usage. Kill the competition. IPO or die.
That works if you’re in a cash-rich market, selling to other tech-savvy customers, and riding a mega trend at the exact right moment. If any one of those pillars fails, the whole structure collapses.
For everyone else, this path leads to overhiring, product bloat, and cap table chaos. You burn before you learn. That’s not a startup, it’s a gamble.
Camels price, don’t subsidize
Camels charge from day one. Real users paying real money for real value.
If someone won’t pay for your product, they’re not your customer. Camels don’t delay monetization, they use pricing as a signal of value. They’re not afraid to ask for money, because they’ve built something worth paying for.
And because revenue comes early, unit economics matter from the beginning. Camels keep burn low so they can adapt, not panic. That flexibility is a competitive advantage, especially when the market turns.
VC success is the exception, not the rule
Let’s get concrete. The success rate of VC-backed startups is poor:
~75% of venture-backed startups fail outright
Only 1 in 10 returns more than the original investment
Fewer than 0.05% of startups become unicorns
That’s not a strategy, that’s a lottery.
Meanwhile, bootstrapped businesses - quiet, resilient, ignored by TechCrunch, are thriving:
Basecamp: built with no outside capital, profitable almost from day one, and still going after 20+ years.
Mailchimp: bootstrapped to $800M+ in annual revenue, acquired for $12B.
eWebinar, ZoHo, GitHub, NomadList - all examples of profitable, founder-controlled companies growing on their own terms.
These companies focused on customers, not investors. They optimized for control, not hype. And they won.
Unicorns do matter. They’re aspirational, and I admire founders who chase them. Some markets require that speed and scale.
But for 90% of startups, that approach won’t work. Build a camel. You’ll live longer, sleep better, and probably still get rich.
Would you rather have a Camel or a Unicorn?
See you soon!
Kristina
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