Tech has long operated under the mistaken belief that you can barrel ahead, damn all laws and regulations, what to speak of the basic rules of business, ask forgiveness instead of permission and it would all work out in the end. That one might have flown – for a time – when tech was a nascent industry attempting to elbow its way to a seat at the table: the problem is that the waiter always comes around with the check.

There have been a spate of IPOs and non-starters, and IPOs that more or less turned out to be non-starters: Uber and Lyft have not exactly been great rides for investors; stationery so-called connected exercycle Peloton has been spinning its proverbial wheels. The We Company pulled its IPO because it turned out to be not about We after all, but rather I, I, me, me.

LUPA

Of course, the time to take a cold hard look at these companies was at the onset – didn’t Uber and Lyft need drivers, and wouldn’t those drivers be somewhat entitled to benefits at some point? Peloton is an exercycle. How many pieces of exercise equipment have had their hot minute in the spotlight before consumers moved on to the next thing? We is office space – nothing new there, except that the company seemed to have expanded as quickly as its CEO/ founder’s outsized ego.

“I think the message is that a path to profitably that does not require magical thinking matters,” said Lise Buyer, founder of Class V Group, a consulting firm which advises company management on the process of going public, as MarketWatch reported. “So does corporate governance, and at what valuation it is being offered.”

The Genuine Outliers

There are true disruptors out there who don’t run afoul of regulations or engage in magical thinking. They usually start with a simple idea – and a sustainable business model. Think Dollar Shave Club, which turned selling razors into a subscription model – and were acquired for $1B. And they expanded the offering to become a grooming company.

Always think bigger and outside of the dispenser, or in the case of Casper, the box, although technically, they thought inside of the box.  Casper sells mattresses – or at least, that’s where they started. With mattresses squished into a box, so they’d arrive quickly, and no need to take half the day or so off from your routine to wait for delivery. But Casper – which happens to enjoy the distinction of being the most successful consumer brand ever launched – is not a mattress company: they’re a sleep company. In fact, they’re the sleep company. They sell bed frames, bedding, pillows, lights, even doggie beds, and other accessories you may need around sleep. In fact, the company even acquired Sleepy’s.

Guess when you start with beds, the rest comes naturally, pun intended.

This is not an advert for Casper. This is a nudge to get you to think outside of the box, which Casper did – quite successfully.

Or simply build a better mousetrap. One IPO that did not disappoint this year was Zoom, a company that came up against Skype, GoToMeeting, et al, – in other words, video conferencing, which had been around forever – who managed to have a quite successful IPO. Note to self: Zoom was profitable prior to the public offering. Never take consumers for granted: who doesn’t want a better mousetrap?

Note, too, and as the MarketWatch piece points out, “the biggest losers in the IPO market in recent months beyond the We Co. are companies that claim to be tech companies, but are really using technology to enhance a product, such as a car service from Uber and UBER, -0.17% Lyft, Peloton’s exercise bike…”

This is no longer your dad’s Web 1.0 or even 2.0 and may be time to redefine what is truly a unicorn: that stand-alone company that truly changes the game and has earned its billion-dollar valuation via actual earnings rather than having raised outsized rounds of funding. Given the performances of the tech-enhanced products’ IPOs, it does beg the question: is this a company, or is this a feature? As it turns out, they may well be unicorn wannabees, tooting their own so-called ‘unique’ horns. Onward and forward.