Methodology

Every candidate on NextUnicorn.lol carries a tier that describes its place in the race. The tier controls whether the candidate competes in the public Next Unicorn ranking or is shown as a reference.

Promotion from Next Unicorn Candidate to Unicorn is automatic once our valuation monitor confirms a publicly reported post-money valuation of at least $1 billion.

We run an automated valuation check on a recurring schedule. The goal is to keep every candidate's status current without manual work.

1. Select a batch. Each run picks a small batch of approved candidates, prioritising those that have gone longest without a check.
2. Verify publicly. For each candidate we look for the latest publicly reported post-money valuation, funding round, tender offer or acquisition price.
3. Assign confidence. We only update a valuation when the source is credible. Updates happen on high or medium confidence findings; low confidence results are recorded but do not change the candidate's data.
4. Promote when ready. If the verified valuation reaches $1B and the candidate is still racing, its tier becomes Unicorn and it is removed from the Next Unicorn ranking.
5. Audit everything. Every check writes a row to the valuation log so admins (and eventually the public) can see what changed, when and why.

The monitor is designed to be safe and self-limiting:

• Single-flight lock. A database lease prevents two runs from overlapping, so candidates are never checked twice at the same time.
• Bounded batches. Only a small number of candidates are checked per run, keeping cost and noise low.
• Circuit breaker. If the valuation provider hits a rate limit, credit limit or policy block, the job pauses and resumes automatically once the condition clears.
• No estimates. We only record valuations that have been publicly reported. We do not model, extrapolate or guess a company's worth.

The Next Unicorn leaderboard only includes candidates with Next Unicorn Candidate tier and ranking_eligible = true. The score combines:

• Unique supporters.
• Voting power from paid boosts.
• Recent engagement and momentum.

When a candidate is promoted to Unicorn, it remains discoverable on its own page and in the benchmark section, but it stops competing for a ranking position.

Some candidates belong to curated collections such as Revolut Mafia, Spain Tech or Spanish Unicorn Benchmarks. Collections are visual metadata and discovery filters; they do not override the tier or ranking logic.