How do you build a unicorn?
- In a good market, you can demand 10x ARR valuation
- So $1bn market cap = $100M ARR
- If ARPPU is $10/mo (or let’s just say $100/year), then $100M ARR = 1M paying users
- If assume 10% paid conversion (which is on the upper end; most services, whether B2C like games or B2B SaaS, get a low single digit conversion rates), then 1M paying users = 10M total active users
In summary, the numbers you have to go for:
10M+ total active users
10%+ freemium conversion
1M+ paying users
$10/mo+ ARPPU
Of course there are so many other factors (e.g. market environment, churn/retention, CAC and unit economics, etc), so the above is just a back of the envelop math, at best. But it’s one way to look at things on a very high level.