Shein is still looking to IPO, Reuters reports. The company is looking to list on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and could complete its IPO as early as April.Β The push for London comes after the company stopped trying to list in the U.S. as lawmakers raised concerns over Sheinβs connections to China and labor [β¦]
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Philippine fintech startup GCash is gearing up for what could become the countryβs largest stock offering, with plans to raise up to $1.5 billion through a domestic IPO. The company has enlisted major financial players, including Citi, Jefferies, and UBS, [β¦]
The post Philippine fintech startup GCash eyes $1.5 billion IPO, hires banks first appeared on Tech Startups.
Datavant
Datavant is hungry for more acquisitions as the $7 billion healthcare data startup inches closer to an IPO. The company is planning at least "one or two" more acquisitions in early 2025, CEO Kyle Armbrester told Business Insider exclusively.
Datavant, which manages patient data exchanges between providers, payers, and life sciences organizations, has made 11 acquisitions since 2017. The company kicked off a fresh M&A rush in the fall, picking up data privacy organization Trace Data and two data analytics products from healthcare AI startup Apixio in September.
Datavant hasn't publicly announced funding since its $7 billion merger with Ciox Health in 2021. Private equity firm New Mountain Capital is the company's controlling shareholder.
With "well over" $1 billion in revenue and steady profitability, CEO Kyle Armbrester said Datavant expects to make these acquisitions with the cash on its balance sheet.
The M&A flurry could be a good sign for Datavant's IPO potential. Flare Capital Partners' Parth Desai told Business Insider in December that he expects private-equity-backed healthcare companies to make tuck-in acquisitions in 2025 as they look ahead to potential IPOs in 2026.
While Datavant won't be first in line to IPO when digital health companies start going public again, Armbrester didn't rule out the possibility of a Datavant IPO in the next year.
"If market conditions are right, and there's a need for cash to continue to grow the business, that's great," he said. But, he added, "there's no drop dead date."
Datavant works with a range of customers, including health systems, insurers, and life sciences organizations, to digitize and manage patient data exchange for tasks like clinical research and population health analytics. Today, the startup says it works with more than 70,000 hospitals and clinics.
As demand for digitized healthcare data has exploded βΒ even more so with the advent of AI, with mass amounts of data needed to train advanced models β Armbrester said Datavant's business is booming.
"There's been a pretty rapid pace of digitization of a lot of manual workflows in healthcare, and we've been a benefactor of that," he said.
With cash flowing into the business, Armbrester said, Datavant is looking for "one or two" additional acquisitions going into 2025. The startup is looking for companies building technology for healthcare providers and life sciences organizations, he said.
Armbrester said he's primarily hunting for great products with existing market traction that Datavant can elevate with its deep data pools and customer bases.
"We're large and diversified, and I think we're in a really good space to take a smaller smarter and apply their logic or artificial intelligence or analytics across that vast network to see a lot of benefit," Armbrester said.
Datavant could be a strong IPO candidate for the next wave of digital health IPOs, investors and bankers told Business Insider in 2024.
Armbrester's entry as Datavant's CEO also bodes well for the company's IPO prospects. Armbrester stepped up into Datavant's CEO role last June after six years leading Signify Health, where he steered the healthcare analytics and services provider through its 2021 IPO and its $8 billion acquisition by CVS Health in 2023.
While Datavant has stayed quiet in recent years about any fundraising, the outlet Buyouts reported in September 2023 that New Mountain Capital was looking to extend its investment into Datavant through a continuation fund in a deal that would give Datavant additional capital.
Armbrester didn't comment on the fundraising reports but acknowledged that Datavant's business maturation could lend itself to a public market debut.
"We're certainly at a size and scale where going public could be something that we contemplate," he said.
But Datavant isn't feeling any short-term pressure from New Mountain or the rest of its board to make an IPO decision.Β "We've got plenty of cash on the balance sheet to do all the M&A I've just described and fund product roadmap investment as well," Armbrester said.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
James Daunt, the CEO of Barnes & Noble and Waterstones, said he would open about 60 new stores in the US.
The British bookseller boss told the Financial Times that he is considering a future initial public offering in London or New York as well as the expansion.
Throughout 2024, 57 Barnes & Noble locations were opened across the US, which currently has approximately 600 stores. In the UK, 12 new stores were added. Speaking about additions in the new year, Daunt said to the FT that he plans to "do that or more in 2025."
Barnes & Noble is the largest book chain in America. After he quit his investment banking job, Daunt launched Daunt Books in London in 1990 β where there are now about 10 stores. In 2011, he was appointed managing director of British bookseller Waterstones to help the struggling business, which faced growing competition from Amazon.
In 2018, Waterstones was sold to Elliott Investment Management by Russian billionaire and publisher Alexander Mamut. Barnes & Noble was acquired by the same New York-headquartered hedge fund the following year for $683 million.
Daunt was named CEO of both book retailers. He also continues to run his independent book chain in London.
The Barnes & Noble and Waterstones boss told the FT it would be "logical" to contemplate an IPO but that any plan would be based on Elliott's strategy for the future. Citing a person familiar with the matter, the FT reported there are no current plans to list the chains. However, it could be a possibility at a later stage.
At present, Daunt hopes to combine the IT and finance platforms at Barnes & Noble and Waterstones into one system.
He noted that it was a "solid Christmas" because as the holiday fell on a Wednesday, last-minute shoppers had the weekend before to purchase gifts.
"The last weekend and [December] 23-24 were exceptional on both sides of the Atlantic," he told the FT. "It has been a good post-Christmas as well."
Reddit; iStock; Rebecca Zisser/BI
2024 was a great year for Reddit.
The company went public in March with a $6.4 billion valuation and reported its first quarterly profit in October. Shares have soared 230% since its IPO.
And as BI's Emily Stewart recently wrote, Reddit has become more mainstreamΒ than ever. Its daily active users jumped 47% in the most recent quarter compared to a year earlier, thanks in part to an unprecedented number of people tacking "Reddit" onto their search terms β a demand the company will try to meet with "Reddit Answers," its new AI-powered search tool.
To find out what this year has looked like on the inside, BI asked 11 Reddit executives β or "Snoos," as Reddit calls its 2,000 employees β to share their favorite highlights behind the scenes of the "front page of the internet."
They described some career-defining moments and talked about managing through rapid change and a new level of pressure. Here's what they said.
"You can pretend that this all makes sense, and it's all business as usual for a little bit. But there are moments where I kind of zone out and realize the scale and how cool a moment I'm in. I guess the word to describe it is 'awe.'" β Serkan Piantino, 41, VP of product, New York City. Joined Reddit in 2022.
"There are always going to be individuals that say, 'Reddit is not what it used to be.' Of course, it's not going to be what it used to be. It's going to be what we make it in the future." β David Trencher, 43, senior managing director, large customer sales, EMEA & Australia, London. Joined the company in 2019.
"2024 has been maybe the highlight of my career at Reddit. We are so focused on starting with community. I think in '24 we've embraced that value more than ever," β Laura Nestler, VP of community, Seattle. Joined Reddit in 2021.
NYSE: RDDT
"Getting Snoo (the company's mascot) to ring the bell (rather than our CEO) was just so Reddit-y. It was a culmination of so many years of hard work to get here, and to see it all come to fruition in a very Reddit way was awesome." β Paulita David, Senior Managing Director, large customer sales in North America. Joined Reddit in 2021.
"We broadcast live globally, and I got to emcee the entire thing on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. We all got to see and feel what was happening." β Michelle Lozzi, 40, senior director of experience, San Francisco. Joined Reddit in 2017.
"It was so nice having our new Snoo mascot up there ringing the bell, symbolizing our employees and the community. There is a human in there. We cannot reveal who it is, but the only clue I can share is you have to be 5'10" to wear the suit." β Monica Benson, 38, head of brand operations and creative production, Los Angeles. Joined Reddit in 2020.
"The biggest change for us has been just the sheer volume of advertisers wanting to advertise on Reddit. It impacts my job pretty dramatically. With this increased demand, we're really embracing more automation." β David
"We run a lot of experiments, so failure is a day-to-day thing. Many of our experiments just don't pan out, and a lot of my job is to refine the idea and keep going or decide to work on something else. We're not a huge company. We still have limited resources, so we have to prioritize." β Piantino
"There's a balance of excitement and pressure that keeps me grounded. The fact that we have a real share price that we can use to measure our size adds somewhat to the pressure, but ultimately the excitement and enthusiasm outweigh it. Something we try to instill in our culture is to not get too high with the highs, and too low with the lows." β Jesse Rose, 38, head of investor relations, Massachusetts, Joined Reddit in 2021.
"I know what volatility looks like, and I know how much that can be a distraction for the team. I liked being a calming force and reminding people that, some days, they're going to say great things about you. Some days they're going to say bad things about you, but you are never as good or as bad as they say you are." β Piantino
"That (two-year pre-IPO period) helped us prepare our teams, which helped alleviate some stress. We were going into it knowing what we needed to do." β Trencher
"Some of our communities are growing really fast, and that can be a challenge. There are a bunch of tools that moderators can now use to handle moments of accelerated growth." β Nicole Heard, 36, UK country lead, London. Joined Reddit in 2022.
"When I came back from maternity leave, I wanted to know how the company culture had changed. It felt warm to come back to that authentic, community-building company, but the stakes are higher." β Benson
"People in our UK office genuinely like spending time with each other. Our office had some of the highest real-life visits this year β probably three days a week. The people and culture is what makes it an amazing place to work." β Sam Hughes, 33, senior client partner, London, Joined Reddit in 2021.
"When I joined in 2021, we had this really small kind of Harry Potter cupboard at a WeWork that sat three to five people. Then we got a bigger space with a whole floor, and now, earlier this year, we got an amazing new building." β Hughes
"We just hosted Mod World in our San Francisco office, which was where we brought in 60 of our moderators and made them feel like they're also a part of this. Because it's not just us building the product, it's them maintaining, operating and, breathing life into it." β Lozzi
"My team has grown from three to eight this year. What I'm looking for is people who understand the human interactions that happen on Reddit, and understand exactly what Reddit stands for in the social media landscape." β Alia Chikhdene, 30, head of community, international, Paris. At Reddit since 2021.
"I was able to travel to countries all over and meet moderators in local markets. I recently got back from a trip to Manila to see the people in our community called Coffee Philippines. Seeing local communities start to thrive and build local ecosystems is really magical." β Nestler
"Our mods are now able to access community funds, where they can apply for funding to do something great with their community and create an impact. The mods of r/Eurovision got funding to go to this year's competition in Sweden to meet the artists and take AMA questions. This became one of the top five fastest-growing communities in the UK, Germany, and Spain. It was a really impactful initiative that helped connect that community to the artists they love." β Heard
r/skincareaddiction. "I'm always trying to figure out how I can address these wrinkles and get glowing skin." β Young
r/PhotoshopRequest: "You can send in photos, and the community will do an incredible job for you." β Lozzi
r/vosfinances: "This is a community that is really helping with financial literacy. You're one question away from building your future wealth plan." β Chikhdene
r/askmeuf: "This translates to 'ask women.' I'm incredibly grateful to the mods who have built this space and made it safe, vibrant, and inclusive, and making it culturally available to French women." β Chikhdene
r/moderatelygranolamoms - "I'm often looking for the most non-toxic, sustainable products and ways to raise my baby, and this is the perfect group for talking about that." β Benson
r/TrueOffMyChest - "It's a very vulnerable place where people can be anonymous and just share personal stories they wouldn't anywhere else." β Benson
Nudphon Phuengsuwan/Getty Images
The healthtech sector will see more private-equity-backed M&A and a fierce battle between AI-scribing startups next year, according to thirteen investors in the healthcare VC market.
At the beginning of the year, healthcare venture capital appeared poised for a rebound. Investors hoping to do deals again after a two-year funding drought watched as healthcare startups flooded back to the market to grab more cash.
Those VCs raced to break out their checkbooks for hot new AI startups in the first quarter, from scribing startups like Abridge to automated prior authorization players like Cohere Health.
A confluence of macroeconomic factors β from still-high interest rates to fundraising struggles for venture firms to the uncertainty of a looming presidential election β dampened the anticipated resurgence. 2024's funding appears to be, at best, on pace with 2023 levels, with $8.2 billion raised by US digital health startups in the first three quarters of this year compared to $8.6 billion through Q3 2023, per Rock Health.
Now, with interest rates expected to drop and a new administration on the way, VCs are anticipating sunnier skies in 2025.
After a slow year for healthcare M&A, investors want to see more deals in 2025.
With interest rates expected to come down β and investors facing pressure to deploy capital β private equity buyers should be more active in 2025, said .406 Ventures managing director Liam Donohue.
And Flare Capital Partners' Parth Desai said he's already seeing private-equity-backed healthcare companies looking to buy smaller startups. Their goal, as he understands it, is to make tuck-in acquisitions in 2025 that improve their growth stories as they look ahead to potential IPOs in 2026.
"Maybe they're not phenomenal outcomes, but at the end of the day, they'll create some liquidity," Desai said of those acquisitions. "I expect that to be one of the first exit windows starting to manifest in 2025."
Investors were hopeful but unsure that the IPO window would meaningfully reopen for digital health startups in 2025, despite startups like Hinge Health and Omada Health signaling their intentions to test the public markets.
Venrock partner Bryan Roberts said he expects the healthcare IPO market to remain relatively quiet. LRV Health managing partner Keith Figlioli suggested we won't see IPO activity kick off until the second half of the year after other exit windows open.
VCs said they're mostly looking for smaller deals next year, from mergers of equals to asset sales. Figlioli and Foreground Capital partner Alice Zheng said we'll see even more consolidation and shutdowns in digital health next year as startups run out of cash.
"Investors will have to make tough decisions on their portfolio companies," Zheng said. "We want to support all of them, but we can't indefinitely."
Foreground Capital
Healthcare startups using AI for administrative tasks were easily the hottest area of healthcare AI investment in 2024. Investors think the crop of well-funded competitors will face increasing pressures next year to expand their product lines.
ICONIQ Growth principal Sruthi Ramaswami said she expects the group of AI scribing startups that landed big funding rounds this year, from Abridge to Ambience Healthcare to Suki, to scale significantly next year using the fresh cash as hospitals scramble for solutions to the healthcare staffing shortage.
As these startups scale, however, they'll face pressure to expand beyond ambient scribing into other product lines, like using AI for medical coding and billing, said Kindred Ventures managing partner Kanyi Maqubela. Scribing technology could become a commodity sooner than later, with many providers trying free off-the-shelf scribing software rather than contracting with startups, Maqubela said.
"It'll be a race to who can start to build other services and build more of an ecosystem for their provider customers," he said.
Kindred Ventures
Some AI startups, like Abridge, have already been vocal about their plans to expand into areas likeΒ codingΒ orΒ clinical decision support. The best-funded AI scribing startups may be able to acquire smaller startups to add those capabilities, but other scribing companies will be more likely to get bought out, Maqubela said.
Flare Capital Partners' Desai suggested that healthcare companies already focused on RCM will try to pick up scribing solutions as the tech becomes a must-have for hospitals. He pointed to Commure's $139 million take-private acquisition of Augmedix in July.
Ramaswami said that demonstrating a high return on investment would be critical for these startups as hospitals pick their favorites among various AI pilots.
Iconiq Growth
While many VCs quietly celebrated the potential for more M&A and IPOs in 2025 following Trump's election in November, the incoming administration could bring some big shake-ups for healthcare markets.
Trump could move to boost private health insurers, including Medicare Advantage plans, in his second term, Venrock's Roberts said. That could be a boon for young insurers like Devoted Health and Alignment Healthcare fighting for Medicare Advantage market share, as well as startups contracting with insurers to improve healthcare payment processes.
He suggested the new administration may even roll back changes made in the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services' latest reimbursement model for Medicare, which went into effect this year and resulted in lower payments for many Medicare Advantage plans in the agency's attempt to improve payment accuracy.
Brenton Fargnoli, a general partner at AlleyCorp, said he expects to see health insurers respond to these risk adjustment changes and move to control higher-than-expected medical costs over the past year by launching a bevy of new value-based care partnerships in 2025 for specialties, including oncology, cardiology, and musculoskeletal care.
AlleyCorp
Some healthcare experts are also concerned that the federal government could cut funding for Medicaid plans. These changes could force states to scramble for new strategies and potentially new partnerships to control healthcare costs for their Medicaid populations.
"If there is a significant shift in direction at the federal level, I think you're going to see certain states do much more than they have in the past to try to continue to address health disparities," said Jason Robart, cofounder and managing partner of Seae Ventures. "As it happens, that creates opportunities for private companies to leverage their innovative solutions to address the need."
Similarly, Muse Capital founding partner Rachel Springate said that while investors in reproductive health startups will be closely watching state-level regulatory changes that could impact their portfolio companies, those startups could see surges in consumer demand as founders step up to fill gaps in reproductive care access.
Some of the Trump administration's proposed moves could stunt progress for health and biotech startups by stalling regulatory oversight. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's pick to lead Health and Human Services, has said he wants to overhaul federal health agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health. Marissa Moore, a principal at OMERS Ventures, said the promised audits and restructuring efforts could lead to major delays in critical NIH research and FDA approvals of new drugs and medical devices.
Muse Capital
In 2025, AI will be an expectation in healthcare startup pitches, not an exception, said Erica Murdoch, managing director at Unseen Capital. Startups have pivoted to position AI as a tool for improved efficiency rather than as their focal point β and any digital health startups not using AI, in turn, will need a good reason for it.
With that understanding, investors expect to see plenty more funding for healthcare AI in 2025. While many tools made headlines this year for their ability to automate certain parts of healthcare administration, .406 Ventures' Donohue and OMERS Ventures' Moore said they expect to see an explosion of AI agents in healthcare that can manage these processes autonomously.
Investors remain largely bullish about healthcare AI for administrative tasks over other use cases, but some think startups using the tech for aspects of patient diagnosis and treatment will pick up steam next year.
"We will begin to see a few true clinical decision support use cases come to light, and more pilots will begin to test the augmentation of clinicians and the support they truly need to deliver high quality, safe care," said LRV Health's Figlioli. He hinted the market will see some related funding announcements in early 2025.
Moore said she's also expecting to see more investments for AI-driven mental health services beyond traditional cognitive behavioral therapy models β "for example, just today I got pitched 'the world's first AI hypnotherapist."
Dan Mendelson, the CEO of JPMorgan's healthcare fund Morgan Health, said he's watching care navigation startups from Included Health to Transcarent to Morgan Health's portfolio company Personify that are now working to improve the employee experience with AI. The goal, he says, is for an employee to query the startup's wraparound solution and be directed to the right benefit via its AI, a capability he says he hasn't yet seen deployed at scale.
"These companies are racing to deploy their data and train their models, and we'd love to see a viable product in this area," he said.
Ella Barak
In early 2020, Raaz Herzberg was a product manager at Microsoft Azure when she was offered a position at Wiz, a newly created cloud security startup. Since then, Wiz has turned down a $23 billion takeover offer from Google, expanded into Europe, and reached $500 million in annual recurring revenue.
Its next priority is to double that revenue metric β and then become a public company.
Wiz was launched by four cofounders who sold their previous business, Adallom, to Microsoft. It bills itself as a cloud security company that helps companies identify risks in their cloud providers.
"It felt like an opportunity I couldn't possibly pass on," Herzberg, now the chief marketing officer and vice president of product strategy at Wiz, told Business Insider in an interview from the company's new London office. "I started as head of product β but we started in the worst time. This was March 2020, when COVID-19 started," she said. "It's easy to remember because everything changed immediately."
It turned out that the pandemic was a boon for business. As more companies shifted to remote work, they increasingly relied on cloud services β expanding Wiz's client base. Four years since its launch, the scaleup has raised over $1.9 billion in funding from investing heavyweights such as Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital, and Index Ventures.
It now sees huge opportunities to use the AI boom to cement its position in the market before it launches its initial public offering.
Cloud computing offers crucial infrastructure underpinning AI applications. As more companies rush to adopt AI, security and privacy have taken center stage.
"The adoption of AI is very similar to what happened with the accelerated use of cloud," Herzberg said. Wiz has found that over 80% of its customers are using AI services β which "are, in some ways, like cloud services. Companies don't buy their machines or chips, so they're using these technologies on the cloud," she added.
"Part of the reason we're growing so fast is because we have access to the public cloud, which is growing incredibly fast β and AI only pushes that growth further," she said.
Because AI services are often used on public clouds β a service offered by third parties rather than an internal network β cloud security has become a critical issue.
Wiz's rapid growth has also been bolstered by its arsenal of acquisitions. This year, it scooped up security startups Rafft, Gem, and Dazz in a bid to bulk up its engineering talent and product suite.
"When we acquire companies, we don't sell their product. They rebuild it from scratch in the Wiz infrastructure," Herzberg told BI, noting that the company is still on the hunt for more acquisitions. "We believe in this concept of growing inorganically."
Wiz's global headquarters is in New York, with offices in Virginia, Texas, Colorado, and Israel. In August 2024, Wiz established its European headquarters in London. Its plush office is a short walk from Silicon Roundabout β London's scaled-down answer to Silicon Valley.
"The European market has been an ideal fit for our technology because it's more constrained by security, and more privacy aware than the US market," Herzberg told BI. "We estimate we will be able to get 35% of our revenue from Europe."
Wiz works with industry heavyweights on the continent, such as Revolut, Tide, and BMW. In 2024, it says it reached $500 million in ARR β but is aiming to reach $1 billion before it IPOs.
Operating independently is a big priority for the company. Earlier this year, Wiz turned down a $23 billion offer from Google, instead opting to prime itself for a public debut.
Herzberg declined to comment about the Google deal but added that Wiz had lofty ambitions to establish itself as a market leader in the cloud security domain.
"We are building a company that I believe can be the biggest cybersecurity company in the world," she said. "And I think at this point we are on that path."
She likened companies buying security services to buying insurance packages, pointing to incumbents in the security industry with a similar model.
"So if I look at the wing of, for example, network security firewalls, it has a clear leader β people today buy Palo Alto firewalls. They used to buy checkpoint firewalls. Now the leader is Palo Alto," she said. "Another example would be like the endpoint production server protection, that's a big domain on its own, and then it has a clear leader, like CrowdStrike."
As the public cloud domain balloons, Herzberg believed there needs to be a "leader in place to protect that domain" β adding that Wiz had a goal of taking that mantle.
A slate of elections this year has pushed the company to prepare for more government-mandated cybersecurity measures, especially in the US. In anticipation of Donald Trump's second term, Wiz has started building on a federal sales strategy.
Still, Herzberg said the scaleup is in "no rush" to go public. It's now looking for a chief finance officer, a requirement for companies that want to IPO.
"With the place we are at in terms of revenue and publicity and everything, it just brings us better candidates than we had as little as a year ago," Herzberg said. "I don't think we necessarily need someone with cloud security experience," she added. "We're hoping to announce that hire soon."
Elsewhere, it's gearing up to release two new products as it cements its presence in Europe with an impending hiring spree.
Still, the team hopes to come full circle to its New York roots by the time it's ready to IPO.
"Which one has the gong?" Herzberg laughed. "New York is where we'd list."
Shares of ServiceTitan surged 42% during its U.S. market debut on Thursday, boosting the companyβs valuation to $8.97 billionβover $3 billion higher than its targeted valuation of $5.16 billion just a week ago. The stock opened at $101 on Nasdaq, [β¦]
The post Software startup ServiceTitan valued at $8.97 billion as stock pops 42% in IPO debut on Nasdaq first appeared on Tech Startups.
Several factors indicate that Snyk, most recently valued at $7.4 billion, could IPO soon. But the CEO told us why it might not.
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Underscore VC
In Silicon Valley, there's often a perceived dichotomy that startups must choose between chasing high growth or achieving profitability. But Klaviyo has shown that itβs possible to do both, the company's chief executive and founder, Andrew Bialecki, said.
"Businesses will pay you to solve real problems. You should be able to fund this stuff if you're good at building software," Bialecki said at the Underscore VC Core Summit, where Business Insider interviewed him in October.
Klaviyo uses artificial intelligence to help merchants sell more by stepping up their email and text marketing. In September 2023, the Boston-based company went public on the New York Stock Exchange, maneuvering through a logjam of initial public offerings for software startups.
Part of the investor buzz around Klaviyo's IPO was that it was an ideal model to go public. It had been able to scale and grow with very little cash burn, a rare feat even in software. One of Klaviyo's biggest flexes in its investor prospectus was that of the roughly $450 million in venture capital it had raised, it spent only $15 million.
Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images
Bialecki said in the past 10 years, many entrepreneurs have fallen into a cycle that looked something like this: raise cash, build something, and then get acquired by a bigger company. Companies that focused instead on steady, organic growth were often labeled as lifestyle businesses, seen as lacking the ambition or potential for the exponential returns that venture capitalists crave. That didn't sit well with Bialecki.
"You look at Microsoft, Apple, IBM, and Intel, all these tech companies that came up in the 20th century. They all went public, and they were profitable β and they were growing really fast. Like, why is it that either-or?" Bialecki said.
Bialecki borderline-bootstrapped the company he started in 2012. It grew to a $1 million revenue run rate before hiring any employees or raising a cent of venture capital.
Even after it started selling equity, with a $1.5 million seed round of funding in 2015, Bialecki and his cofounder, Ed Hallen, raised as little cash as they needed and spent it scrupulously. They focused on getting the product right.
This self-reliant streak allowed the founders to secure capital on their terms without diluting themselves six ways to Sunday. Before the IPO, Bialecki owned a 38.1% equity stake, while Hallen had a 13.9% stake, putting them in the top echelon of founders of software and cloud startups with the largest pre-IPO ownership stakes.
Bialecki advises founders who want to follow a similar path to be disciplined and loud about it. For a company to pursue high growth and profitability, it needs to align withΒ investorsΒ who share the founder's vision and values rather than pressure them into taking additional venture capital just to inflate valuations for their own gain.
"Be clear about what you stand for as a company, and you will get the investors that believe in that," Bialecki said.
Argent Biopharmaβs move to delist from the London Stock Exchange (LSE) has brought attention to a pattern that has been more widespread in recent years. Companies looking for access to finance and the prestige of being publicly listed have traditionally [β¦]
The post What It Means for Investors When Tech Companies Leave the London Stock Exchange first appeared on Tech Startups.
Late last month, we reported on ServiceTitan after the software startup filed paperwork for an initial public offering (IPO) in the U.S. Just two weeks later, ServiceTitan is reportedly targeting a valuation of up to $5.16 billion in its IPO. [β¦]
The post Software startup ServiceTitan targets $5.16 billion valuation in US IPO first appeared on Tech Startups.
In October, Pony AI revealed plans to go public, marking a significant milestone after eight years of development. Just two weeks ago, the Toyota-backed self-driving startup filed for a U.S. initial public offering (IPO), aiming for a valuation above $4 [β¦]
The post Toyota-backed self-driving startup Pony AI raises $260M in U.S. IPO, valued at $4.55 billion first appeared on Tech Startups.
Rather than opening an IPO window, ServiceTitan's IPO could be the first \of something else entirely, VCs warn.
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With the number of generative AI startups steadily climbing since ChatGPTβs debut in 2022, one company has taken the leap to go public, becoming Europeβs first listed generative AI startup. Paris-based generative AI startup LightOn made its market debut today, [β¦]
The post LightOn shares surge 9% in market debut as Europeβs first listed generative AI startup goes public first appeared on Tech Startups.
In August, OLA Electric made a public debut on the Indian stock market, with shares surging 20% on the first day and valuing the SoftBank-backed electric vehicle (EV) startup at $4.8 billion. However, just three months later, the 7-year-old company [β¦]
The post Indian electric scooter startup OLA Electric to lay off 500 employees, just 3 months after IPO first appeared on Tech Startups.
