I don’t know.. but it certainly feels like we are on the cusp of run-up in the stock market, led once again by tech companies, similar to 1999-2000… I say this because I see the same games tech/media companies playing now that tech companies played back then…a lot of them are running, not walking to Wall Street investment bankers to slam through the IPO floodgates while the going is good…Lyft and Uber are just the beginning … Pinterest just filed, IHeartMedia just filled.
AirBnb and Slack probably will file. Maybe Vbro, Robinhood, WeWork….
My current private company rebranded all it’s work under those glorified buzzwords in its attempt to secure more funding from VCs..
My colleague’s company, Sumo Logic looks like they are aligning to go the IPO route too…$230 million funded , on Series F (late stage ) , with the typical high profile VC backers: Sequoia Capital, Accel , Grey Lock Partners, etc
The way I look at is, the folks that are involved the go-no-go decisions on these blockbuster IPOs are not stupid… They aren’t going to file to launch if they think the market conditions are bad…. And everyone involved in IPO , including the underwriters, all have a vested interest to launch at the best time that all their analysts, researchers, etc think it is…Because there is a shitload of money involved in this …From banking underwriting fees, to corporate insiders and early investors that want to cash in… You can say one company filing for an IPO as a fluke and doesn’t suggest anything, but when you see many high profile companies reaching the same conclusion and doing the exact same thing, that’s not a coincidence.. it’s no different than all these big REITs building a shitload of rental homes in SD anticipating a sharp demand for rentals, like we see now…Someone(s) with a lot of money spent a lot of money and time analyzing and figured out now was a “good enough” time to do economic activity X.
So, follow the unicorns..And there’s more unicorns to come ….And many of them arent profitable , but who cares…. neither is Lyft or Uber…Once the initial higher quality IPOs launches you’ll see a followup of IPOs from less-than-stellar companies, followed by bunch of extremely shitty companies getting on the bandwagon. Using an old motto from old school IPO days, “…it’s all about the revenue and subscriber growth…The greater the loss, the more glorious it is….”
But hey, there will always be retailer stock buyers that insists on making insiders instant millionaires by buying shares post-IPO while pre-IPO insidersof all size and shape desperately dump as many vested shares possible once any sort of lockup period expires…so that those unicorn capital gains achieved by insiders can be put into more predictable/stable investments for the long haul..such as CDs and a basket of Vanguard index funds….lol…
