Unless you have been surfing the wonderful web with your eyes closed, it’s no surprise that IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) have been surfacing in recent headlines a lot lately. If you are anything like me, it took some digging around to figure out exactly what this means, and how companies go about strategically filing for such a thing (cue the black hole of Mashable articles and tab-overload on the top of my browser). It can be a little overwhelming, leaving you thinking, “Ugh, can’t someone just summarize this whole IPO thing for me?”
Yup. We got you.
See: to your right.
Next up, Twitter. Twitter learned from Facebook’s mistakes when they recently filed for their IPO and did things a little differently. They went about filing in a much more private way, trying to keep things as non-monumental as possible. They priced their shares much more modestly and tried to keep company culture in the office running smoothly, as displayed by their tweet posted right after they announced their plan to go public:
Bravo Twitter, bravo.
Then, Candy Crush filed for an IPO. Who knew all those “lives” you were buying and incessant invites you were harassing your Facebook friends with helped value the company at….are you ready...$5 billion. How!?
As you can see, it’s a little hard for me to wrap my brain around that one.
The next big company in talks of an IPO is Snapchat. Ah, the app that started out as just a seemingly pointless photo platform to send 10 second less-than-flattering selfies of yourself, has grown into one of the most popular social sharing vehicles out there. Some value the worth of the company at $3.5 billion, some value it at $800 million (potato pah-tot-oh, right?) However, there are a few qualms, such as how can this thing make money? Can companies utilize it for business purposes? Taco Bell has a few ideas on that front. These questions are being sorted out now, but here is some more information. And this, too.
Here at UrbanBound, a startup tech company, we try to stay on top of this news and be well aware of what is going on in our industry. It helps us stay at the top of our game and keep up with the ever-growing and expanding world of technology. There are a ton of do’s and dont’s for startups filing for IPOs, and it can certainly be a little overwhelming. Luckily, these decisions will most likely not be something you as an individual will ever have to deal with. All you have to do is trust that those in charge will make the right choices and do what’s in the best interest of your company and its employees. We certainly have that trust in UB (shout out to our big guys, Jeff and Michael).
