I Believe In Unicorns And You Should Too:
- Daniel Cuesta
- Aug 27
- 5 min read
(Applying The VC Mindset To Life)
Insight 61 | Ladies and Gentlemen, I come before you today with a truly incredible scientific discovery—a groundbreaking, earth-shattering, and universe-bending revelation: Unicorns are real and they are among us.
That’s right. While they’re hard to find, you’ll notice them a lot more after today's article.
They typically distribute themselves according to the 2/20/80 pattern, but with proper training and a good eye, they can be observed in your lifetime.
Don’t worry if those numbers don’t make a lot of sense at first; if they did, everyone would be talking about the power of unicorns, so no need to fear.
Most times, you only have to be right once to make it all worth it.

I bet you’ve heard the expression “A penny for your thoughts?” Right? If you're like me, you’ve probably retorted, “ONLY A PENNY?” in indignation and pushed back for at least a little more credit. But let's run with that for a second and tease out some interesting calculations..
Even if it were just a penny for our thoughts, most of us would be millionaires by roughly the age of twenty. The average human is estimated to have between 12,000 and 60,000 thoughts per day, the majority of them repetitive. Taking the lower end of this spectrum and making each thought worth a cent, you would earn about 120 dollars per 24 hours of existence, and by the age of 23, you would be a millionaire. Taking the upper limit, you would hit a million about every four and a half years.
That is mind-bending to think about … but that's only if each of your thoughts were worth a penny. Imagine if you gave yourself the benefit of the doubt and raised it to a dime or a dollar, even!
Sadly, we cannot do that, not because some of our thoughts aren't that precious, if not invaluable, and incapable of being quantified, but because the truth is that we just don’t know which thoughts are worth a penny, which are worth a dime, which might change your life and, speaking realistically, which thoughts are worth nothing (no offense).
But here's the good news: not every thought needs to be the winning lottery ticket!
Imagine your life is a dartboard and your decisions are the darts. Over the course of your run here on earth, you will play countless rounds. Realistically, even with some moderate training, you can’t guarantee every shot will hit dead center. To a typical, non-trained player, who randomly throws their dart at the board, the odds of hitting the bullseye are one in 1261 shots.
The quirkiest thing about it all? In the game of life, it doesn't matter how many shots you took, as long as you hit the bullseye a handful of times throughout your play. That is the beauty of hitting the right thing at the right time… some shots are worth radically more, and even though they happen fewer times, they make up for themselves and all the other shots combined.
Now take that knowledge and imagine an entire industry using that framework as the sole basis for its business model and betting its existence on the “possibility” that something might go big.
That's loosely how Venture Capital, VC for short, operates, and it’s responsible for billions of dollars worth of successful companies. They base their whole livelihood on about 2% of the deals they see, and of those deals, they expect about 20% to deliver 80% (or more) of the profits.
Tangibly, that means the majority of their investments will terminate in failure; some might break even, but it's those last few that will generate so much cash that the rest of the losses won’t have mattered. Now here is where everything mentioned before ties together.
In the entrepreneurial world, the privately held startup companies that reach a valuation of over $1 billion are known as… drum roll please … UNICORNS! Airbnb. Canva. .Uber. Instacart and so many more stand as great examples. They’re rare, but they’re real.
Our lives are much the same way. Sure, you might have had a handful of bad days, a few misaligned thoughts, a couple of poor decisions, but it's that one where you chose to start living differently that really matters in the end. That one choice is part of the 20% good bets from the 2% of calculated decisions you made along the way that will yield more than 80% of your joy, satisfaction, peace, and purpose you might experience!
So do not become discouraged when you miss a shot, recalibrate and take another. Remember, a successful VC strategy is informed by precision and thoughtful consideration, but also one that knows it must dust itself off, learn, and try again.
In other words, unicorns are roaming your lands, and you didn't even have the faintest idea of their existence. It turns out we each have a small number of them running through our pastures, but we’ve never been trained to recognize them.
Perhaps it's because they're so young or covered in mud that we don't see their magic. But as demonstrated by the 2/20/80 distribution, it's these unusual beings that actually make the difference in our experience during this time on earth. They’re the ones worth protecting and fighting for, even if rare and far between.
—
So yes, sometimes your thoughts are indeed only worth a penny, and some are worth exponentially more.
Regardless, over a lifetime, those are a lot of pennies, and in good time, you have a solid net worth of memories, relationships, and charming stories. But this said, you should realize that it's those special moments that make a difference. It’s those unicorns of life that you will want to tell your grandchildren, and they end up telling theirs.
While many things might happen throughout, it is specific and distinct moments that will define and potentially revolutionize your life entirely. These things, decisions, moments … Unicorns … are the ones that will stick with you till the day you die and be the ones responsible for your journey’s highest peaks.
This is a cause to wake up every day with eager ambition to keep swimming, keep thinking, and give this life all we have
With so much evidence, I can’t help but confess I believe in Unicorns, don’t you?
- Making The Most Of Being Curious,
Daniel J. Cuesta
Sources:
Small Things Can Hit Big: Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin. - Zechariah 4:10
A God Thought Is Higher Than Any One Of Our Thoughts (Pray For These): “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways”, declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” - Isaiah 55:8-9
You Got A Lot Of Thoughts, Steward Them Rightly: To whom much is given, much will be required. - Luke 12:48
You Might Fall A Couple Times, But It's the Getting Up That Counts: Though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again. - Proverbs 24:16
Rough Estimate Of The Number Of Thoughts We Have Per Day: Link
Odds Of Hitting The Bullseye: Link
Phenomenal Video Explaining VC Thinking And Operations: Link