Field hunting for “unicorns” – Newspaper Kommersant No. 235 (7436) of 12/19/2022

Immigrants make a significant contribution to the development of the global sector of unicorn companies (especially large start-ups). Foreign founders participated in the creation of 40% of such businesses, experts from the Russian Cluster Observatory of the HSE Institute for Statistical Research and Economics of Knowledge found out. Depending on the predominant direction of migration of the founders, the researchers divided the countries into three groups: attracting “unicorns” from outside, creating them on their own, and “losing everyone”. Russia is assigned to the last group – in terms of the number of creators of “unicorns” who left (38 people), it significantly outnumbers other similar countries.

The authors of the study “Relocation as a driver of innovation activity: a global study of the international migration of founders of unicorn companies”, researchers from the National Research University Higher School of Economics Evgeny Kutsenko, Kirill Tyurchev and Tatyana Ostashchenko studied data from 1357 “unicorns” from 49 countries. Let us clarify that a “unicorn” is usually called a startup that has reached a valuation of $1 billion in no more than ten years since its founding, has not entered the stock exchange, and remains in the ownership of its creators by at least three-quarters. The experts identified the “country of origin” of more than 3,000 founders of such startups and the universities where about 2,700 of them studied. They traced the migratory movements, comparing the countries of birth of the founders and the places where they registered “unicorns”. It turned out that foreign founders participated in the creation of 40% of billion-dollar companies.

The countries studied by the experts were divided into three groups: those that attract “unicorns” from outside; growing their own and “losing all”. The first includes states that have at least seven “unicorns”, over 50% of which are founded by migrants. This group consisted of the USA, Great Britain, Germany, Canada, Singapore, Switzerland, Mexico and Indonesia. Researchers name the developed venture capital market, the presence of leading universities, research organizations and business schools, as well as highly cited scientists, Nobel and Fields Prize winners, as factors for attracting “unicorns”.

The second group includes countries with the same number of start-ups as in the first, but in which the share of “unicorns” founded by immigrants is less than 30% (that is, in these states, “own” entrepreneurs prevail among the founders). These are China, India, France, Israel, Korea, Australia, Japan and Sweden. It is noted that for the creation of “unicorns” on their own, country spending on research and development is important.

Finally, the third group consisted of countries that do not have “unicorns”, but where more than eight of their departed founders were born. These are Russia, Romania, Poland, Bulgaria, Pakistan, Ukraine, Iran. According to this indicator, the Russian Federation is ahead of other countries in its group – 38 such entrepreneurs have irretrievably left it (for example, Nikolai Storonsky, co-founder of the Revolut fintech startup, and Sergey Belousov, founder of the Acronis IT company). For comparison, 20 future founders of the “unicorns” left Ukraine, 11 each – Romania and Iran, 10 – Poland.

The authors of the study point out that low indicators on such parameters as GDP per capita, the number of large high-tech companies, the volume of high-tech exports, the number of international patent applications, as well as the presence of supercomputers in the country, the development of intellectual property protection and the rule of law, contribute to the outflow.

As Evgeny Kutsenko noted earlier, in the migration of “unicorns” the Russian Federation acts as an absolute donor. At least four operating (Acronis, Revolut, OCSiAl, InDriver) and two former “unicorns” (Arrival and Yandex) completely left Russia or registered head offices outside of it. It should be noted that in the BRICS countries comparable to the Russian Federation in terms of economic development, there are “unicorns” registered on their territory and recognized in the world (see “Kommersant” dated September 27, 2021).

The authors of the study note that universities are a significant resource for both growing unicorns and attracting them: most of the founders graduated from the world’s leading universities, every third entrepreneur studied in a country of migration. The 20 universities with the most graduates of unicorn creators account for nearly 40% of the total. These are the universities of the USA (13), Israel (3), Great Britain (2), India (1) and China (1).

Venera Petrova