People starting their own startups are not likely to get anything useful out of this article. There is little to "learn", as the link-bait title suggests, from a statistical analysis of billion-dollar companies.
There were, however, a few somewhat interesting takeaways amid the difficult-to-read mess:
The average founding age is 34.
80% of founders have started a company before.
Only 2 out of 39 have any female cofounders.
The billion+ startups are pretty evenly split into free, freemium, paid, and enterprise only pay structures.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but everyone I recognize on the list is a software-only company.
"We found 39 companies belong to what we call the “Unicorn Club” (by our definition, U.S.-based software companies started since 2003 and valued at over $1 billion by public or private market investors)."
So yes, they are talking only about software companies.
I have to kindly disagree with your opinion that there's nothing to learn here for aspiring entrepreneurs: one possibly actionable take-away seems to be "You haven't missed the train if you're 25, not even close. You still have time to learn, start a first company that probably won't take over the world, then try a second company."
There were, however, a few somewhat interesting takeaways amid the difficult-to-read mess:
The average founding age is 34.
80% of founders have started a company before.
Only 2 out of 39 have any female cofounders.
The billion+ startups are pretty evenly split into free, freemium, paid, and enterprise only pay structures.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but everyone I recognize on the list is a software-only company.