In this Beyond The Stage 1:1, Stephen Ibaraki cuts through the hype around “building a unicorn” and lays out what actually separates winners from wishful thinking: defensible IP, a real market, a resilient team, and access to capital. He then tackles the “AI bubble” narrative head-on—arguing that what we’re seeing is not a fad, but an acceleration driven by compounding breakthroughs across chips, compute, and applications.

Takeways:
• Unicorns aren’t built on storytelling—they’re built on defensibility, market pull, team resilience, and capital strategy.
• Leaders can’t operate in silos anymore: the competitive landscape shifts fast, and “signals” show up daily.
• AI isn’t a bubble in his view—it’s a flywheel: as compute and tooling improve, capability compounds and spreads across every sector.