Aileen Lee, the VC who coined ‘unicorns,’ on why it’s so hard to track billion dollar startups—and what she thinks of their dark cousins, ‘unicorpses’

A decade after Aileen Lee coined the term “unicorn,” she knows that the term has taken on a life of its own—and is imperfect.

“It’s an ephemeral word, it’s a point in time,” she told me. “I don’t think we have a good shortener for long-term, sustained success…So, I think it’s useful, but people maybe over-rotated on it a little bit to achieve something in the short term.”

Lee coined the term “unicorn” in 2013 as she was starting her own firm, Cowboy Ventures. She’d previously spent more than a decade at Kleiner Perkins, and at Cowboy has backed a wide range of businesses, including Spruce Health, Crunchbase, Dollar Shave Club, and The League. But it’s a November 2013 TechCrunch post that she's most remembered for, called “Welcome To The Unicorn Club,” originating a term that’s since permeated our consciousness.

Over the years, aspiring entrepreneurs with gilded resumes have come to Lee, asking her how to build a unicorn. Her response is good-natured but clear: “That’s not how this works.” Recently, Lee made headlines for her and Cowboy VC’s latest report, looking at where the unicorn landscape is today, ten years after she first described what a unicorn is.

I confess one of my biggest questions: Why does no one seem to agree how many unicorns there are out there? Lee’s unicorn count is 532, CB Insights’ is 1,233, and PitchBook’s is 1,354. The discrepancies between numbers come down to geographic parameters—Lee, for example, is only looking at the U.S.—and disclosure issues. Startups still sparingly disclose valuation, let alone more granular metrics that offer a look at the financial health of a business.

“A lot of people say that we should use revenue,” Lee told me. “We’d love to use revenue, but nobody’s disclosing revenue. Margins and profitability, that would be great, we’d love to use those numbers.”

Over the next few years, Lee also predicts that we’ll see unicorns vanish, with the herd shrinking by more than 30%. With the precipitous falls of companies like Convoy and Olive Health, the “unicorpse”—that is, the unicorn’s undead, dark, cousin—is a story that’s gaining steam everyday. She laughs as I bring it up, but stops herself.

“It’s kind of cute and funny, but this is also people’s careers,” she said. “It’s not funny when you lose your job. It’s people’s hopes and dreams, too.”

True enough. Olive Health, once valued at $4 billion, shuttered around Halloween, while logistics startup Convoy (previously valued at $3.8 billion with names like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos buying in) was sold for parts to Flexport around the same time.

As unicorpses are piling up, I ask Lee if she still thinks the term “unicorn” remains useful. She surprised me here—it really doesn’t seem like she’s all that wedded to the phrase that made her famous. Lee is “totally open” to another term gaining traction—and actually ascribes much to journalists, particularly the New York Times’ Farhad Manjoo, for seeing that she got any credit at all for coining the term.

“It’s not about me,” she said.

A reading recommendation...If you want to learn more about 'unicorpses,' this is your lucky week! My colleague Jessica Mathews, who will be writing for you tomorrow, just wrote Fortune's latest cover story about slain unicorns, disappearing dreams, and the sometimes-brutal private markets. Check it out here.

One more thing…Term Sheet is partnering with Semaphore again for its 16th annual confidence survey of private equity, venture capital, hedge fund, and other professionals. For the curious, a preliminary result: So far, 71% of you say Sam Altman should be running OpenAI. We'd love for you to weigh in; it’s anonymous and should take you 3–4 minutes. You can take the survey here. Have a look at last year’s results here, here, and here.

See you tomorrow,

Allie Garfinkle
Twitter: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com