What exactly am I paying 1,000 dollars a month for?

Membership of the club. That covers continuing access to the pre-IPO shortlist selected by Unicorn Private Research, the full research archive in nine languages, advance notice of allocations, and the option to invest alongside Unicorn Private in the selected companies. The fee is not an investment and is not applied to the purchase of any security.

Is the membership fee the minimum investment?

No. The two are separate. The membership fee is what you pay to belong to the club. The minimum for each individual transaction is set in the offering documents for that transaction and is communicated before any commitment is made.

How long does membership last, and can I stop?

Membership is billed monthly and continues until you cancel it. Cancelling stops the billing and ends access to the shortlist and the archive. It does not affect any investment already made.

Which companies does the club cover?

Established private companies already valued above one billion dollars, the companies commonly called unicorns. The public company profiles on this site show the kind of analysis members receive, on names such as Anthropic, OpenAI, Databricks, Stripe and Revolut.

Do I have to invest once I am a member?

No. Membership carries no obligation to participate in any transaction.

No. The club is not a collective investment scheme and does not pool members' money. Each member decides on each transaction individually, and each transaction is documented on its own terms.

How is the payment handled?

By Stripe. Your details and your card are entered on Stripe's own secure page, over an encrypted connection, and card data is never seen or stored by us. Stripe also handles the monthly billing and the receipts.

What happens after I sign up?

You receive the investor eligibility declaration and immediate access to the current shortlist and the research archive. If the declaration cannot be completed for your jurisdiction, the membership is cancelled and the amount charged is returned.

Unicorn Club

Unicorn Club is an international investment club, open by application to qualified investors and not offered to the public. Its members receive the pre-IPO opportunities selected by Unicorn Private Research, the research centre that publishes this site in nine languages, and the option to invest alongside Unicorn Private LLC in the companies that pass that selection.

Key takeaways

Membership gives access to the selected pre-IPO opportunities, not to a fund. Each investment is a separate decision taken by the member.
The selection covers established private companies already valued above one billion dollars. Early-stage start-ups are outside the mandate.
Membership: 1,000 US dollars a month, billed by card and continuing until cancelled.
Membership is reserved for qualified and professional investors, in any jurisdiction where the rules allow it. It is not offered to the general public.
Members are served in their own language, across the nine languages the research centre publishes in.

An international club, by application only

Unicorn Club is built for investors who already operate across borders. Membership is open, on application, to investors who qualify as professional, qualified or accredited in their own jurisdiction, in Switzerland, the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Gulf, Asia and elsewhere, subject in each case to the local rules on private placements. Every member is served in their own language, across the nine languages in which the research centre publishes, and the documentation for each transaction is provided in English.

Admission is by application and eligibility check rather than by subscription, and the club is not marketed to the public. That is not a device: private secondary positions in companies of this size are limited in quantity by what existing shareholders are willing to sell and by what the company will approve, so access is necessarily restricted and cannot be extended indefinitely.

What a member receives

The shortlist. The pre-IPO opportunities selected by Unicorn Private Research, with the reasoning, the reported valuation, the date and the public sources behind each one.
The option to invest alongside Unicorn Private LLC in the companies on that shortlist, on the terms set out in the offering documents for each transaction.
Advance notice of allocations. Secondary positions in these companies are limited in size and are not always available, so members are notified before an allocation is placed.
The full output of the research centre: the company profiles, the valuation tracker, the guides and the data files, in the member's own language across nine languages.
A direct line to the research centre for questions on any company covered, in the member's own language.

What the selection looks for

The mandate is deliberately narrow, and the narrowness is the point. Unicorn Private invests in established private companies already valued above one billion dollars, with revenue, a demonstrated product and an identifiable route to a listing or a sale. It does not fund companies at the stage where most of them fail.

That distinction is measurable rather than rhetorical. PitchBook puts the failure rate of venture-backed companies at 23.6 per cent at Series A against 10.8 per cent at Series E, in data published on 5 August 2021. Industry Ventures estimates the loss rate at roughly 65 per cent for early-stage venture against under 30 per cent late stage. Correlation Ventures found that close to half of all venture financings lose money. Late-stage secondary positions in large private companies are a different segment of the same asset class, and the published statistics say so.

None of that makes a pre-IPO position safe. The risks that remain are the entry price, the absence of a guaranteed exit, the time to one and the possibility of losing the entire amount invested. Those risks are set out in full in the offering documents for each transaction, and a member should read them before committing.

How membership works

Start the membership at 1,000 US dollars a month. Your name, billing details and card are entered on Stripe's own secure page; we never see or store card data.
Confirm your investor eligibility. The declaration required in your jurisdiction is collected at sign-up, and membership is activated once it is complete.
Receive the current shortlist and the research archive, in your language.
Decide, transaction by transaction, whether to participate. There is no obligation to invest, and no minimum number of transactions.

What the fee is, and what it is not

The membership fee of 1,000 US dollars a month buys membership of the club and continuing access to the research and to the selected opportunities. It is not an investment, it is not applied to the purchase of any security, and it does not entitle the member to any return. Investments made through the club are separate transactions, documented and priced individually, and each one is subject to acceptance.

Membership is billed monthly by card and continues until it is cancelled. Cancelling ends access to the shortlist and to the research archive; it has no effect on any investment already made, which is governed by the documents signed for that transaction.

Who can join

Membership is reserved for investors who qualify as professional, qualified or accredited under the rules of their own jurisdiction, because the transactions the club gives access to are private placements that are not available to the general public. Switzerland, the European Union and the United States each define the threshold differently, and the definitions are set out in the guide on qualified investors published on this site.

Who runs it

Unicorn Club is operated by Unicorn Private LLC, a Delaware limited liability company founded in 2026 by investors active in private equity and start-up investing since 2005. Unicorn Private Research is its research centre, and publishes free reports, company profiles and a valuation tracker in nine languages. Everything the club distributes is built on the same rule as the public site: every figure carries a date and a link to a public source.

Join Unicorn Club

1,000 US dollars a month, by card. You enter your details and pay on Stripe's secure page, and billing continues monthly until you cancel.

Apply for membership

Prefer to speak to us first? Write to info@unicornprivate.com and we will come back to you.

By starting a membership you confirm that you are acting as a professional, qualified or accredited investor under the rules of your own jurisdiction. Membership of the club is not an offer of securities and does not constitute investment advice. Investments in private companies are illiquid and the entire amount invested may be lost.

FAQ

What exactly am I paying 1,000 dollars a month for?: Membership of the club. That covers continuing access to the pre-IPO shortlist selected by Unicorn Private Research, the full research archive in nine languages, advance notice of allocations, and the option to invest alongside Unicorn Private in the selected companies. The fee is not an investment and is not applied to the purchase of any security.
Is the membership fee the minimum investment?: No. The two are separate. The membership fee is what you pay to belong to the club. The minimum for each individual transaction is set in the offering documents for that transaction and is communicated before any commitment is made.
How long does membership last, and can I stop?: Membership is billed monthly and continues until you cancel it. Cancelling stops the billing and ends access to the shortlist and the archive. It does not affect any investment already made.
Which companies does the club cover?: Established private companies already valued above one billion dollars, the companies commonly called unicorns. The public company profiles on this site show the kind of analysis members receive, on names such as Anthropic, OpenAI, Databricks, Stripe and Revolut.
Do I have to invest once I am a member?: No. Membership carries no obligation to participate in any transaction.
Is this a fund?: No. The club is not a collective investment scheme and does not pool members' money. Each member decides on each transaction individually, and each transaction is documented on its own terms.
Can anyone join?: No. Membership is reserved for investors who qualify as professional, qualified or accredited under the rules of their own jurisdiction.
How is the payment handled?: By Stripe. Your details and your card are entered on Stripe's own secure page, over an encrypted connection, and card data is never seen or stored by us. Stripe also handles the monthly billing and the receipts.
What happens after I sign up?: You receive the investor eligibility declaration and immediate access to the current shortlist and the research archive. If the declaration cannot be completed for your jurisdiction, the membership is cancelled and the amount charged is returned.

Related guides

About the publisher

This guide is published by Unicorn Private Research, the research arm of Unicorn Private LLC, a Delaware private equity firm that acquires secondary stakes in late-stage private technology companies before their IPO. The firm invests only in established companies already valued above one billion dollars, not in early-stage start-ups, and its founders have been active in private equity and startup investing since 2005.

Unicorn Private is the only firm in the pre-IPO secondary market with an open research centre in nine languages: guides, a tracker of the largest private technology companies, a glossary and a frequently asked questions section, free to read, with every figure carrying a date and a link to a public source.

More about Unicorn Private and how it invests