VentureBeat: Why it still makes sense to go Public
Ben Marklein
· 3 years ago
Could use some editing: "One oft-sighted issue are the costs" should be "One oft-cited issue is the cost".
Matt Marshall
· 3 years ago
Ben, thanks, fixed!
Andre
· 3 years ago
Kudos to Ms. Buyer for pointing out that SOX is not the primary reason for the IPO drought. if I hear some pinhead journalist mention that again, I will vomit. I do, however, think that this piece is slightly off the mark. The lack of IPOs is not merely a function of market jitters. This second resurgence in the Valley (call it Boom 2.0 if you will) has been marked by companies that are far more narrow in their scope.
Successful IPOs, and public companies for that matter, tend to deliver a more full-featured and wide-ranging product/service. This time around, we are seeing companies that merely deliver features.
Entrepreneurs are going the bootstrap route and trying to avoid taking large amounts of VC funding up front. The result is that it is simply more difficult to deliver anything but one-dimensional products/services.
Flickr and Blinkx are great ideas/technologies, but are too narrow to be stand-alone enterprises -- they need to be combined with other features to create a powerful, rounded-out and sustainable product/service.
IPOs are great and frequently make people very rich - but they shouldn't be forced.
Adam Rifkin
· 3 years ago
Lise and Andre, good points.
It was interesting to me that cosmetics company Bare Escentuals (BARE) went public the same day as Shutterfly and sparked a lot of interest.
Then I looked at some of the details for Bare Escentuals (88% a year revenue growth since 2001, 30% operating margins) and realized that technology or not, it's growth stories that resonate with the market.
We already knew that, but it's helpful to be reminded of it whenever a company like BARE -- or athletic apparel maker UnderArmour (UARM), which went out last year -- goes public.
When more young Silicon Valley companies exhibit those kind of growth characteristics, they too will resonate with the public markets.
Entrepreneurial Characteristic
· 2 years ago
More info please.... Your topic about Why it still makes sense to go Public needs more comments. I'd like to spend me Monday nights reading about entrepreneurial characteristics
All Comments
Successful IPOs, and public companies for that matter, tend to deliver a more full-featured and wide-ranging product/service. This time around, we are seeing companies that merely deliver features.
Entrepreneurs are going the bootstrap route and trying to avoid taking large amounts of VC funding up front. The result is that it is simply more difficult to deliver anything but one-dimensional products/services.
Flickr and Blinkx are great ideas/technologies, but are too narrow to be stand-alone enterprises -- they need to be combined with other features to create a powerful, rounded-out and sustainable product/service.
IPOs are great and frequently make people very rich - but they shouldn't be forced.
It was interesting to me that cosmetics company Bare Escentuals (BARE) went public the same day as Shutterfly and sparked a lot of interest.
Then I looked at some of the details for Bare Escentuals (88% a year revenue growth since 2001, 30% operating margins) and realized that technology or not, it's growth stories that resonate with the market.
We already knew that, but it's helpful to be reminded of it whenever a company like BARE -- or athletic apparel maker UnderArmour (UARM), which went out last year -- goes public.
When more young Silicon Valley companies exhibit those kind of growth characteristics, they too will resonate with the public markets.