#Crunchbase highfive series#
Yet at the moment of its public market debut, its lower-than-planned share price put the company’s value at just $2.9 billion, significantly lower than its $6 billion valuation at the time of its Series E funding round a little over a year earlier, implying the dreaded “down-round.”Īnd yet, the real substance to this story - in terms of how if affects the future - may have more to do with the many markers in between those selected pricing bookends. The basic facts are these two data-points: The company, which started with zero value six years ago, ended up worth $4.2 billion at the close of the market on the day of its IPO.
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I think this is likely to cause a rebalancing of late-stage valuations and an increase in transparency in private markets. The less lucky are often the late-stage investors - generally the providers of the bulk of the capital - and the talent that signs on as these companies grow to fighting strength and scale.
![crunchbase highfive crunchbase highfive](https://miro.medium.com/max/1996/1*ivsxh2F0eTTQo0RuN1EvPw.jpeg)
My take is that the IPO is further evidence that the new rules of the hunt for “unicorns” - startups valued at more than one billion dollars - are creating a small class of “haves” and a much larger class of “have-nots.” The lucky ones are the earliest-stage investors that find tomorrow’s unicorns. The new rules of the hunt for “unicorns” are creating a small class of “haves” and a much larger class of “have-nots.” 19 debut on the New York Stock Exchange, when the payments-processing company’s stock was priced below its previous funding round in the private markets, has left a lot of people in the startup community (and beyond) wondering what’s going on.
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The wildly contradictory responses to Square’s Nov. Square’s recent $2.9 billion IPO is either a huge win for its investors or a sign of very bad days to come, depending on whether you believe the “high-five” tweets from prominent venture capitalists (VCs) or the slew of hand-wringing articles - from sources like NPR, The Verge and the Wall Street Journal - essentially saying it marks the end of free-flowing startup capital.