Evidence since 2022 shows that a large share of unicorn and late‑stage startup exits have indeed been flat or down relative to their last private valuations, leaving late‑stage investors with little or negative return – consistent with Jason’s “lots of pushes” prediction.

1. Macro: many exits now price below the last private round

• Silicon Valley Bank’s 2025 State of the Markets data (summarized by SaaStr/Jason Lemkin) reports that 57% of 2024 VC‑backed tech IPOs priced below their last private valuation, i.e., they were down‑round IPOs rather than step‑ups. That is explicitly framed as a normal but now very common outcome, contradicting the 2020–21 mentality that every IPO would be an up‑round. (linkedin.com)
• Earlier research on unicorn exits by Stanford’s Ilya Strebulaev shows that average exit valuations dropped sharply after the 2021 peak, with 2022 exits averaging about $1.5B vs much higher averages in 2019–21, reflecting a more muted exit environment for unicorns that reached peak valuations during the bubble. (linkedin.com)

2. Concrete unicorn examples from the 2020–21 bubble cohort
Several flagship 2021–22 unicorns have exited at or well below their last private valuations:

• Instacart raised at a $39B private valuation in 2021, but IPO’d in 2023 around $8B, leaving many late‑stage investors underwater on that round. (notescast.com)
• Reddit last raised at $10B in 2021 and went public in 2024 at up to $6.4B, which the Financial Times explicitly describes as part of a “growing trend of ‘down round’ IPOs” among Silicon Valley startups. (ft.com)
• Klaviyo IPO’d at about $9B, a small but real dip from its 2021 private valuation, and is cited alongside Instacart and Reddit as an example where IPO prices were at or below peak private marks, leaving late‑stage equity with little upside. (linkedin.com)
• Navan (TripActions) reached a $9.2B valuation in a 2022 round but IPO’d in 2025 at roughly $6.2B, another prominent unicorn whose public valuation came in materially below its last private round. (businessinsider.com)
• Klarna peaked at $45.6B in 2021 but eventually listed at about $15.1B, a massive down exit from its bubble valuation. (businessinsider.com)

These are all part of the early‑2020s unicorn cohort Jason was talking about; in each case the exit valuation is at or far below the last private valuation, matching his notion that many exits would be “pushes” or worse for late‑stage capital.

3. Late‑stage investors often just get capital back or lose money

• The FT notes that these down‑round IPOs “could lead to significant losses for late‑stage investors who fueled the 2021 bubble”, explicitly saying those investors gave up protections and are now taking hits when companies list below their last private valuations. (ft.com)
• Commentary from the All‑In crew and others on Instacart and Klaviyo emphasizes that late‑stage 2021 investors are underwater at IPO pricing, whereas early investors still make strong multiples – exactly the distribution Jason described, where late‑stage rounds mainly see capital back (or less) while earlier rounds capture most of the gains. (notescast.com)
• SVB’s and SaaStr’s analysis goes further, arguing that 80–90% of large 2020–22 late‑stage SaaS rounds done at 15–20× ARR are “structurally impaired” and will never grow into those valuations, implying that many eventual exits will cluster around or below those peak prices. (saastr.com)

4. Broader valuation reset for the ~2021–22 unicorn herd

• TechCrunch/Secfi data show that in 2022 about 24% of startups on Secfi’s platform cut their valuations, and that late‑stage startups were already seeing far more flat and down rounds than before—an early sign that many unicorn valuations from 2021 could only be realized, at best, as pushes. (techcrunch.com)
• European data from PitchBook and the FT estimate that the continent’s unicorns were overvalued by roughly €100B (over 20% of aggregate value) post‑2021, with many now failing to meet the $1B threshold and a high share of new rounds being raised at lower valuations. (ft.com) This reinforces the idea that a large slice of the global ~900–1,000‑company unicorn pool is facing exits or follow‑on financings near or below prior marks, rather than big step‑ups.

Assessment

• Jason’s claim was qualitative (“a lot of pushes”), not a precise percentage. By late 2025 we have: (i) multiple marquee unicorns from the 2021–22 cohort exiting below their last private valuations; (ii) system‑level data showing that a majority of recent VC‑backed tech IPOs are down rounds; and (iii) broad evidence that late‑stage 2020–22 vintages are impaired, with many investors getting at best modest or zero upside on those peak rounds.
• While most of the ~900 early‑2022 unicorns have not yet exited, the exits we do see, plus aggregate IPO statistics and valuation data, are exactly in the direction he described. In many cases the reality has been harsher than a simple “push,” with clear capital loss for late‑stage rounds.

Given that, the prediction that many of the unicorn exits from that cohort would be pushes (or worse) for late‑stage investors has clearly materialized in the observable data to date, so classifying the forecast as right is justified, even though the story is still playing out for the remaining private companies.