That correlation and causation are not the same thing is good to remember when reading Sifted’s article about senior leadership hiring practices of unicorns vs non-unicorns under the headline “Want to become a unicorn? Expand your leadership team”.
Unicorns should be larger companies than non-unicorns and thus would require more senior leadership (and managers and individual contributors) than smaller non-unicorns. In addition a unicorn would likely have more money and a more aggressive growth and hiring plans to add leadership roles.
While I think the headline completely misses the point, the data provided in the article can be used to benchmark the size of a startup’s leadership team for the first five years, which is helpful.
