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Fun fact - this is the second YC IPO, after Dropbox.
by romanhn 8y ago
Fun fact - this is the second YC IPO, after Dropbox.
- testfoobar 8y agoI'm looking at the S-1 for Pagerduty. It doesn't mention Y Combinator. Who/what entity represents Y Combinator in the shareholdings? Can we guesstimate their return? https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1568100/000162828019003003/pagerdutys-1.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1568100/000162828019...
- jedberg 8y agoYou won't see them in there because their percentage is too small to be listed (under 5%).
- vichu 8y agoS-1s only list >5% stockholders - you'll note that the co-founders have been diluted down to 7.1%. Y Combinator has definitely been diluted below that amount, that being said random back of the napkin (aka pulled from my ass) numbers for their share count is probably 700,000ish so their return is pretty damn good.
- alphagrep12345 8y agoJust second?
- maxxxxx 8y agoJust looked up Dropbox stock price. Not exactly pretty. This is not the 90s when the retail investor could make money from tech stocks. SNAP is bad, Dropbox doesn't look good. Neither does Lyft.
- defen 8y agoSQ up 5.8x since Nov 2015 TEAM up 4.1x since Dec 2015 TWLO up 4.7x since Jun 2016 SHOP up 7.4x since May 2015 OKTA up 4x since Apr 2017 ZS up 2x since Mar 2018 Retail investors can definitely still make money.
- mbesto 8y ago400% more than alpha in fact: https://www.bvp.com/bvp-nasdaq-emerging-cloud-index https://www.bvp.com/bvp-nasdaq-emerging-cloud-index (granted not all of those are IPOs in the last decade)
- Zarath 8y agoMongoDB is another I believe
- xan_ps007 8y agoHow does the IPO works in US? Do retail investors get to subscribe to the IPO shares before the listing date? Or the retails investors can only "buy" the shares once they start trading on the exchanges?
- defen 8y ago> Do retail investors get to subscribe to the IPO shares before the listing date? Generally no, especially if it's in high demand. My broker allows retail investors to place bids if they have over $250k in their account and agree, as a condition of having access to future IPOs, not to sell within 30 days. However there's still no guarantee of having your order filled. The prices I quoted were from the first day of trading, not the IPO.
- nathan_f77 8y agoWhen you look at these results, it doesn't seem too risky to invest in a tech IPO, especially if the company "makes sense" [1]. These companies sound like solid businesses: Atlassian, Shopify, Square, Twilio. This metric would have probably excluded Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Lyft. I think Uber will also be a gamble. But PagerDuty seems like a solid company that will do well, and a far less risky investment than a social / ridesharing service. Can anyone point out cases where a "reasonable" [1] company ended up underperforming or crashing a few years after an IPO? [1] E.g. HN comments are generally positive, instead of "this is ridiculous".
- ChuckMcM 8y agoOn Dropbox, for context when a tech company IPOs there are typically "ratchets" in place that prevent all shareholders from selling stock right away, so initial investors, founders, and employees often each have their own 'hold off' time that can be anywhere from 3 months to a year. Because of this dynamic, the stock price of the company a year after they IPO is a really interesting indicator of the 'retained' value of the company. Which is to say after anyone who has a big chunk of the company could sell (and that drives down the price) versus how many people are selling. This is where the float is maximized so the stock price is more closely tied to the market value rather than a scarcity value. Dropbox's performance has been pretty solid in this regard, especially compared to things like GroupOn or Zynga (notable problem children) or SNAP (current poster child). I don't own any DBX that I'm aware of (I may through an aggregated ETF so for the pedantic folks I leave that disclaimer in) but it wouldn't seem to be a "bad" investment for holding.
- remote_phone 8y agoAre you mixing up “ratchets” with “lockup periods”? Ratchets are guarantees for investors that IPO prices hit a certain value other wise they get trued up by a certain amount. This happened to Square for their IPO.
- ChuckMcM 8y agoYes, I was thinking about lock ups.
- icedchai 8y agoThere are plenty of gains to be had. I'm up 400% on FB, I'm up 200%+ on TWLO, HUBS, MU. I'm over 100% on PYPL, AMD. I am down 5% on DBX.
- Jach 8y agoMy VGT holdings have been doing well. https://investor.vanguard.com/etf/profile/VGT https://investor.vanguard.com/etf/profile/VGT
- usaar333 8y agoYa, tech is one of the strongest performing sectors in the last decade.
- cobookman 8y agoSNAP is up 105% YTD. I wouldn't discount that company yet. Their market cap is actually fairly well priced right now, and I'd wager they are under-valued (assuming they execute well over next 6 months).
- fgonzag 8y agoI see less and less people using it though (I've long since uninstalled) at least for my generation (30s). Unless it's still very very in with the younger crowd, I don't think it will do well long term.
- user9182031 8y agoCalling in from the 20s crowd. It's been years since anyone I know cared about snap. If it's not on Instagram, it didn't happen.
- fgonzag 8y agoAnd I don't think the 40+ crowd is using it either. So it means either teens are using, or snapchat is on borrowed time.
- YeahSureWhyNot 8y agoand for a whole year of being public, dropbox kept dropping and now is 30% less than its IPO price.
- rrdharan 8y agoDropbox's "IPO price" was technically $21. It opened at $29, though so perhaps that's what you mean?