If we noticed anything this week, it was that it may be time to rethink unicorns and hockey stick growth. We know what investors look for: TAM (Total Addressable Market) and it had better be big, as it’s all about ROI.

WeWork is planning their IPO, and after years of expansion and so-called hockey stick growth, the cracks are showing. Business Insider laid out The history of WeWork’s meteoric valuation rise — and fall, including “the coworking startup’s governance, real estate holdings, succession plan, employee retention, and questionable patent purchases have spooked potential investors. WeWork has amended its SEC filings twice already to address several of those concerns, but it might not be enough.

“According to a Reuters report, WeWork will target a $10 billion valuation for its IPO, drastically lower than the $47 billion valuation it last fetched in private markets. A $10 billion public valuation would be only slightly above the total amount of funding WeWork has taken in as a private company: about $8.39 billion since 2011, according to Pitchbook data.”

And speaking of Adam Neumann, remember Theranos?

After quite a bit of scruity in the press, it seems that the WeWork IPO has been postponed to the end of the year.

Then there’s Uber and the decision handed down by the California courts that drivers are to be given benefits and treated as employees. As the Daily Mail (et al) reported Uber will refuse to comply with new California law requiring them to reclassify contract workers as employees after ride-share company claims drivers are ‘not core to their business model.’

How do you have a ride share company without having drivers to provide those rides? Welcome to CaliSpeak. Or simply re-read 1984.

Last week we covered the scrutiny under which the tech oligarchs are coming, speaking of unicorns, and since the industry is so fond of pattern recognition, here we go…

The big picture: many unicorn companies are now facing serious legal and financial issues due to tech’s (plus investors’ and/or shareholders’) voracious if not insatiable appetite for hockey stick growth. In case you missed it, An artificial-intelligence baby monitor under consideration at Google would warn parents that the baby is about to wake up via an eye-tracking monitor. Awesome! May as well have read, “Google considering tracking users from the crib,” and in the name of unremitting hockey stick growth, get ‘em as early as you can and just another construct for an invasion of privacy. More, more, more!

For those of us playing the home version, the latest batch of unicorn IPOs haven’t exactly distinguished themselves, either. Lyft rose 20% to $87 a share after the IPO. Today, it’s at a bit less than half that.

It may be time to for investors to rethink chasing unicorn. Big rounds may get big press coverage, but since investors are partners in the company in which they’ve invested, may be time to look at a model that includes dividends, once the company is profitable. LPs won’t have to wait seven to ten years for their payout and startups won’t have to constantly be chasing the devil. Instead, the focus would be more on a business model to profitability, aka building actual sustainable companies that aren’t solely reliant on being acquired or doing an IPO. Which has pretty much been the model to date and note to investors, re chasing after unicorns: while ROI is important, what we’re witnessing more and more – especially with the unrelenting intrusions into our privacy – is that it’s turning out to be a very high price to pay. It should come as no surprise, lest we forget, that unicorns are the stuff of myths. Onward and forward.