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Five years ago all the chatter was about private financing being the “new” normal for tech, as it offered closer control with fewer disclosure requirements. Com

Five years ago all the chatter was about private financing being the “new” normal for tech, as it offered closer control with fewer disclosure requirements. Companies like Uber were raising insane amounts of private money while thumbing their nose at public markets. Now all of a sudden it seems there’s a new IPO filing every week or so. Does this indicate a stronger economy and/or pressure from shareholders to allow their investments to become more liquid, or are people smelling a downturn around the corner and hoping to cash out before valuations drop?

TAForObvReasons 9y ago
It's a confluence of all of those factors: - Dropbox demonstrated a reasonably strong market for IPOs, so it's definitely safer for other companies to get in before the first flop. - There's probably a lot of pressure to go public, seeing as how many of these companies have private for more than a decade [1] - There's also reason to believe we may see pressure in the equity markets in the near future, especially as the Fed adjusts interest rates. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bit9/funding_rounds/funding_rounds_list#section-funding-rounds https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bit9/funding_rounds/... Series A was in 2005
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  It seems like a terrible time to put your org's shares into the public market, so late in the business cycle with the eventual downturn looming. EDIT: Agree that if you must go public, go before the music stops. I'm wrong here.
  - positr0n 9y ago
    Surely now is preferable to during the downturn when you'll get half the value for the same percentage of your company? (Assuming of course that you and I are correct that a downturn is looming).
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - sqldba 9y ago
      You’ll get half the value and it remains stable - versus you get twice the value and then it suddenly nosedives and everyone questions your performance as CEO because “you must have made it happen”. Is that possible?
  - icedchai 9y ago
    Now's the perfect time. We're near the peak, so valuations are very inflated.
freehunter 9y ago
Personally I think it's both. We're seeing companies that normally would have gone public (enterprise software like Carbon Black) at the appropriate time, combined with some companies where it makes little sense to go public (Spotify, Snapchat) that I think are cashing in before the bottom drops out. Carbon Black has nowhere to go but up, they're destroying the AV industry and every security consultant I know is pushing this style of endpoint protection over traditional AV. And they're in the enterprise market, so they can charge big bucks. Spotify on the other hand is one player in a crowded and competitive market with some huge players who could destroy them in a heartbeat. And even with their exclusives and much bigger subscriber count, they're still struggling to beat much smaller competitors in actual engagement [1] (or at the very least struggling to properly count their streams which seems like a basic requirement). It makes little sense for them to go public when they could just as easily be out of business this time next year. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/3/17192342/apple-music-the-weeknd-my-dear-melancholy-spotify https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/3/17192342/apple-music-the-w...
- TAForObvReasons 9y ago
  Spotify was "forced" into IPO in a way: https://www.recode.net/2018/1/3/16847786/spotify-tpg-tencent-debt-dragoneer-ipo-music-streaming https://www.recode.net/2018/1/3/16847786/spotify-tpg-tencent... > In 2016, TPG, Dragoneer and Goldman Sachs lent Spotify $1 billion via convertible debt financing, which was supposed to give the lenders the ability to eventually turn their loans into equity. > The deal let Spotify bide its time before an IPO, but not too much time: The longer Spotify took to go public, the better the terms would get for the lenders. News emerged Wednesday that the company had confidentially filed IPO documents in late December.
- ocfx 9y ago
  Cylance is doing a lot better.
- woolvalley 9y ago
  As a carbon black victim who gets angry at CB consuming %50 of my CPU in the kernel as I do builds that touch many small files, it just feels like a combination of corporate spyware/rootkits, traditional antivirus and uploading that info to a backend. Am I wrong? Why hasn't traditional AV created a similar product then?

TAForObvReasons 9y ago

It's a confluence of all of those factors: - Dropbox demonstrated a reasonably strong market for IPOs, so it's definitely safer for other companies to get in before the first flop. - There's probably a lot of pressure to go public, seeing as how many of these companies have private for more than a decade [1] - There's also reason to believe we may see pressure in the equity markets in the near future, especially as the Fed adjusts interest rates. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bit9/funding_rounds/funding_rounds_list#section-funding-rounds https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bit9/funding_rounds/... Series A was in 2005

toomuchtodo 9y ago
It seems like a terrible time to put your org's shares into the public market, so late in the business cycle with the eventual downturn looming. EDIT: Agree that if you must go public, go before the music stops. I'm wrong here.
- positr0n 9y ago
  Surely now is preferable to during the downturn when you'll get half the value for the same percentage of your company? (Assuming of course that you and I are correct that a downturn is looming).
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - sqldba 9y ago
    You’ll get half the value and it remains stable - versus you get twice the value and then it suddenly nosedives and everyone questions your performance as CEO because “you must have made it happen”. Is that possible?
- icedchai 9y ago
  Now's the perfect time. We're near the peak, so valuations are very inflated.

freehunter 9y ago

Personally I think it's both. We're seeing companies that normally would have gone public (enterprise software like Carbon Black) at the appropriate time, combined with some companies where it makes little sense to go public (Spotify, Snapchat) that I think are cashing in before the bottom drops out. Carbon Black has nowhere to go but up, they're destroying the AV industry and every security consultant I know is pushing this style of endpoint protection over traditional AV. And they're in the enterprise market, so they can charge big bucks. Spotify on the other hand is one player in a crowded and competitive market with some huge players who could destroy them in a heartbeat. And even with their exclusives and much bigger subscriber count, they're still struggling to beat much smaller competitors in actual engagement [1] (or at the very least struggling to properly count their streams which seems like a basic requirement). It makes little sense for them to go public when they could just as easily be out of business this time next year. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/3/17192342/apple-music-the-weeknd-my-dear-melancholy-spotify https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/3/17192342/apple-music-the-w...

TAForObvReasons 9y ago
Spotify was "forced" into IPO in a way: https://www.recode.net/2018/1/3/16847786/spotify-tpg-tencent-debt-dragoneer-ipo-music-streaming https://www.recode.net/2018/1/3/16847786/spotify-tpg-tencent... > In 2016, TPG, Dragoneer and Goldman Sachs lent Spotify $1 billion via convertible debt financing, which was supposed to give the lenders the ability to eventually turn their loans into equity. > The deal let Spotify bide its time before an IPO, but not too much time: The longer Spotify took to go public, the better the terms would get for the lenders. News emerged Wednesday that the company had confidentially filed IPO documents in late December.
ocfx 9y ago
Cylance is doing a lot better.
woolvalley 9y ago
As a carbon black victim who gets angry at CB consuming %50 of my CPU in the kernel as I do builds that touch many small files, it just feels like a combination of corporate spyware/rootkits, traditional antivirus and uploading that info to a backend. Am I wrong? Why hasn't traditional AV created a similar product then?