Abstract
Business unicorns, highly valued privately owned companies, are a paradox. On one side, they systematically attract significant funds to fuel their growth, which is their quintessential strategic objective, and on the other hand little, even negative, profitability to support their high valuation. Unicorns also experienced very limited success when they went public. Unsurprisingly, concerns grow regarding the financial sustainability and legitimacy of unicorns. However, the population, value and funding of unicorns continue to grow globally. In this paper we aim to delve deep into the constituent dimensions of the paradox and shed light on the contradictions of unicorns through a discourse analysis supported by a narrative literature review. We identify three main paradoxes, contradictions that can help inform future research: the contradiction between valuation and future cash flows, the role of biases in reinforcing that paradox and finally the role of business model isomorphism and innovation and continuous growth and fund influx with no track record of profitability.