The new fund is larger than its initial target for the capital pool ($150 million), and it is the San Francisco-based firm’s largest fund to date. The firm is keeping its prior leadership in place while adding a new partner. Notably, all the partners are men.����

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Many firms are raising more capital than before, a move that can allow a venture group to defend their ownership in investments that raise more capital later on and provide pricing flexibility.

Here’s Jackson Square’s new fund in relation to its preceding two, each of which weighed in around the $120 million mark, according to the firm:

It’s a pretty sizable jump in dollar terms ($73 million), and when measured in percent (just under 61, compared to $120 million).

Jackson Square has made 56 known investments to date, according to its Crunchbase profile. Its most recent investment was , a tech platform that enables fans to sell and exchange tickets to live events. Other investments include , which connects athletes to each other, , which protects enterprise sites from attacks, and , a bus rental platform.��

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Part of Jackson Square’s investment philosophy is that it invests in anti-hype industries, .��

The firm, as detailed in the post, wants to invest in new technologies not when they are first put into the market, or when their “hype” takes off. For example, Jackson Square points to artificial intelligence and crypto as examples of industries that bubble up because investors don’t want to miss out on what their friends are investing in.��

Instead of jumping in on those trends, however, Jackson Square wants to invest “a bit later, in what Gartner calls the Trough of Disillusionment.”��

That means the firm wants to invest in tech when it’s at its least popular. So far the plan has worked well enough for the firm to raise a new, larger fund. We’ll know more as it begins to put the $193 million to work.

Why This Fund?

Why cover Jackson Square’s raise out of the mix of newly announced funds? (Crunchbase has a tally of.)

The chief reason is that the firm released a number of statistics regarding its performance: “6 of 59 core investments have achieved a $1B+ exit and/or valuation.” That gave us a chance to ask the firm about SaaS prices. Reached via email this morning, Jackson Square Managing Director said the following regarding SaaS valuations:

The larger market swings from fear to greed. When we are in a greed market, valuations are stronger and in a fear market, valuations are more conservative. We are still in a greed market, but there are signs that fear is creeping in.

All this in mind, recall that we’re still seeing a robust global venture market. It’s possible by Q4 we’ll see some of that fear translate into numbers.��

Illustration: .

When was going public, things looked great for the at-home, teeth-straightening company. After raising , SmileDirect’s IPO pricing cycle went terrifically. The company initially set a $19 to $22 per-share IPO price range before selling nearly 60 million shares at $23 apiece.

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The new per-share price valued SmileDirectClub at around $8.9 billion. For the Nashville-based company, that new valuation was rich and welcome. By pricing where it did, SmileDirect raised over $1 billion with minimal dilution, at least compared to what it would have cost the firm to raise the same sum at its old valuation.

That prior valuation was a fraction of the firm’s IPO worth. Indeed, when SmileDirectClub last raised known private capital, (just one year ago), investors valued it at a smidge under $3.2 billion after counting the value of the $380 million infusion.

Given that the company managed to squeeze a 178 percent gain in value in under a year when it went public, perhaps we should have better forecasted what came next.

Namely this:

As we reported at the time, SmileDirectClub’s shares were instantly spat out by the public markets, closing at $16.67 on their first day of trading, a 28 percent decline.

Today the company is worth just over $10 per share, off 55.5 percent from their IPO price ahead of trading today. That’s a stunning repudiation, bringing the company to a somewhat embarrassing private-public value inversion. SmileDirect is in danger of seeing its public valuation fall under its final��private valuation:

• Final SmileDirectClub private valuation: .
• Current SmileDirectClub public valuation: $3.94 billion.

It’s not there������,��but the value of SmileDirectClub today is a shadow of what it was when its bankers got its IPO put together. (Oddly, this result is an endorsement of sorts for the traditional method of determining the value of a company. If SmileDirect had been valued fairly, it would have raised far less capital in its debut.)

One last thing before we go. If you observe the above chart, there are two lines. The orange line corresponds to the far-right axis. It’s SmileDirect’s trailing price/sales ratio. More simply it gives us a good idea of how investors are valuing the company’s top line.

As you can see, early in its life as a public company, even down from its IPO price, SmileDirectClub was able to garner a double-digit revenue multiple. Calculated on a forward basis that metric would shrink some, but a better question is why the firm was valued at over 10x revenue to begin with?

In retrospect, SmileDirect has all the things that public-market investors seem tired of:

• Dual-class share structure.
• Scaling losses as the firm grew.
• A recent sales and marketing expense boom.
• Majority non-recurring revenue.

To its credit, SmileDirectClub had rapidly scaling revenue (from $175.1 million in H1 2018 to $373.5 million in H1 2019), and strong gross margins (around 78 percent in H1 2019). Those two highlights weren’t enough to sustain a nearly $9 billion valuation.

We’re keeping an eye on SmileDirect, and will report if it does dip below its final private price. Sadly the company doesn’t report earnings until November 12th, so we still have a while to wait for new numbers.

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Last updated September 18, 2019.

• IPO date: September 13, 2019
• IPO price: $15 per share
• IPO valuation: $4.4 billion
• Initial post-IPO arc: Positive.

Cloudflare finally settled on pricing its shares at $15 after previously setting ranges of $10 to $12 and then $12 to $14. Its IPO was a success, with its stock opening at $18 on its first day of trading. Things are still going strong, with its stock trading at $19.34 as of midday September 18.

• IPO date: September 12, 2019
• IPO price: $23 per share
• IPO valuation: $8.9 billion
• Initial post-IPO arc: Down.

DIY teeth straightening company SmileDirectClub set its IPO price at $23, above the price range of $19 to $22 the company had intended. But pricing high has its consequences, and nearly a week after beginning trading on the public markets, SmileDirectClub’s stock still hasn’t hit $23. Its shares closed at $16.67 on its first day of trading, and is at $19.07 as of midday September 17.

• IPO date: August 15, 2019
• IPO price: $9.50 per share
• IPO valuation: $2.1 billion
• Initial post-IPO arc: Modestly positive.

Chinese financial services and tech company 9F priced at the high end of its range of $7.50 to $9.50 per share. We wrote about the company’s financials right before it went public, and since hitting the Nasdaq, 9F’s stock price has risen a bit to $11.29, as of midday Aug. 28.

• IPO date: August 8, 2019
• IPO price: $14 per share
• IPO valuation: $447 million
• Initial post-IPO arc: Slow start, but good short-term returns.

InMode’s stock stayed relatively flat around $14 for about a week after it began trading on the Nasdaq. But its stock saw a jump around Aug. 14 and was trading at $21.60 as of midday Aug. 28.

• IPO date: Juy 31, 2019
• IPO price: $16 per share
• IPO valuation: $4.5 billion
• Initial post-IPO arc: Unknown.

Dynatrace above its raised $13 to $15 per-share IPO price range after initially targeting an $11 to $13 range. How it will fare isn’t clear, though early signals look promising. The company is just set to trade. We’ll have more the next time we update this post.

• IPO date: July 24, 2019
• IPO price: $26 per share
• IPO valuation: $1.3 billion
• Initial post-IPO arc: Sharply higher.

Crunchbase News covered Health Catalyst when it raised $100 million earlier this year, but not during its IPO run. We can only do so much.

What matters is that the company which focuses on health data was one more feather in the cap of healthtech. Since going public at $26 per share, Health Catalyst’s equity has risen to more than $40 per share. It’s been a fantastic year for health-focused tech companies to go public.

• IPO date: July 25, 2019
• IPO price: $28 per share
• IPO valuation: $2.5 billion
• Initial post-IPO arc: Sharply higher.

Yet another 2019 healthtech offering, we described the company’s financials as having “quick revenue growth” along with “growing losses” when we first saw the figures.

Whatever we called the numbers, investors like them. And after a period of time prepping its launch, Livongo’s equity has traded higher as a public company. It’s worth about $44 per share as we write to you. That’s a good margin higher than its IPO price of $28.

• IPO date: July 18, 2019
• IPO price: $21 per share
• IPO valuation: $2.5 billion
• Initial post-IPO arc: Sharply higher.

�ѱ�岹��������,��not Medallica as we kept typing, has landed on its feet in the public markets. After going public in mid-July for $21 per share, equity in Medallia rose in value to about $40 as I update this post to include the company’s results. That’s a nice post-IPO appreciation.

A customer experience venture, Medallia , making this IPO somewhat important from a venture-returns perspective. Sequoia was a key backer of the company while private.

We covered its S-1 debut, its pricing here and here, and its initial, strong results.

• IPO date: July 8, 2019
• IPO price: $17 per share
• IPO valuation: $600 million
• Initial post-IPO arc: Up.

Phreesia’s modestly-sized healthtech IPO (the company provides check-in services on tables for medial settings) wasn’t a big deal in Silicon Valley. But that doesn’t mean that the company wasn’t interesting enough for us to track. You can check our notes on the company here, and here.

What Phreesia’s IPO details is a market hungry for growth; even smaller offerings can find a warm reception in 2019. Phreesia is worth $10 more per share today compared to its IPO price. Not bad.

• IPO date: July 7, 2019
• IPO price: $11.50 per share
• IPO valuation: $3.8 billion
• Initial post-IPO arc: Down.

We were amped for DouYu’s IPO. After all, a similar offering in 2018 from Huya, another China-based esports company, had done well. Whatever magic Huya had, however, DouYu did not receive the same.

Indeed, the company’s value has fallen since its debut, an offering that priced at the bottom of the company’s $11.50 to $14 per-share price range. Bottom, and then lower. Not a great way to start life as a public company.

• IPO date: June 28, 2019
• IPO price: $20 per share
• IPO valuation: $1.7 billion
• Initial post-IPO arc: Up.

The RealReal is currently worth $26.23, far above its $20 per-share IPO price. Given that the firm had initially targeted a $17 to $19 per-share IPO price, it’s good news all the way down. For more, head here and here.

• IPO date: June 27, 2019
• IPO price: $13 per share
• IPO valuation: $1.5 billion
• Initial post-IPO arc: Change started life above its IPO price, but is still worth less than what it had initially hoped to be when it first gave pricing hints.

With in private capital attached to Change before it went public, the company had big shoes to fill. However the firm’s $13 per-share IPO price was far below its proposed 4160 to $19 per-share range. As such, yes, the firm is up from $13, but down from where it had hoped to price. At least the firm seems to have been priced fairly in its debut.

• IPO date: June 26, 2019
• IPO price: $12 per share
• IPO valuation:
• Initial post-IPO arc: Down.

In post-IPO coverage, Cambium Networks managed to scare up the following headline: “” Damn.

Now worth just $9.30, this is a rare 2019 IPO letdown.

• IPO date: June 20, 2019
• Reference price: $26 per share
• IPO valuation:
• Initial post-IPO arc: Slack started high, and has kept altitude between it and its reference price.

Slack, have you heard of it? Did you know that the workplace productivity company pursued a direct listing instead of a traditional IPO? I bet have heard of it, and did know the rest.

Still, Slack fits our model and thus joins our list. The company is now richly valued, and public. Take that, direct listing haters.

• IPO date: June 14, 2019
• IPO price: $22 per share
• IPO valuation: $8.8 billion
• Initial post-IPO arc: Sharply higher, rendering all pets.com jokes moot. For now.

Sure, Chewy doesn’t make money. Sure, it has negative historical precedent. But none of that mattered when the company went public. Now worth $34.21, Chewy is yet another strong debut in 2019.

Given that the firm was previously acquired for $3.4 billion, its new worth is a treat to backers. And, if you got in at the IPO price (I doubt that you did), you are doing well.

• IPO date: June 13, 2019
• IPO price: $21 per share
• IPO valuation: $800 million
• Initial post-IPO arc: Sharoly higher, followed by some steam-blowing-off.

If you didn’t expect Fiverr to go public at all, that it’s done well since debuting must be quite the trip. The gig workplace company is worth $27.30 today, sharply above its IPO price. And when you look back at its share price chart, the firm was worth more than $30 not too long ago.

Not bad for a company you mostly remember for its odd advertising.

• IPO date: June 12, 2019
• IPO price: $34 per share
• IPO valuation: $6.6 billion
• Initial post-IPO arc: Way, way, way up.

We wrote a bit about CrowdStrike on its road to going public. Here’s our first piece after it filed, and here’s some more, some more, and more.

CrowdStrike had a good IPO, raised a lot of money, and has since grown in value. But it’s that final point that is driving controversy. Indeed, some VCs are complaining that many companies are going out underpriced, effectively leaving money on the table. Yes, we’ve had this argument before. No, it won’t ever stop.

• IPO date: May 16, 2019
• IPO price: $17 per share
• IPO valuation: $5 billion
• Initial post-IPO arc: Akin to pouring hot coffee on your lap, this bad boy jumped when it hit the market.

Let May 16th last in our memory as the day that proved just how open the IPO window was in 2019. The very same IPO window that Uber and Lyft tripped while crossing.

Luckin at its IPO was a company with shocking losses, a model that was far, far from proven, and more. And its shares ran sharply higher in its first day of trading. Why? Growth, of course. Luckin has��lots of it, and the public market loved it. Uber had all but none in quarters leading up to its own IPO, and it showed when the results were tabulated.

Of course, Luckin has a lot to prove. But at least its start on the American markets was solid.

• IPO date: May 16, 2019
• IPO price: $16 per share
• IPO valuation: $1.5 billion
• Initial post-IPO arc: Huge first day, lots of bang for this quiet-ish SaaS-y CDN.

In the shuddering wake of the Uber IPO, the Fastly debut managed to light up the markets, shooting higher in its first day of trading. Even a weak market couldn’t slow the firm down.

So, our question regarding how to price the company was answered twice. First, when Fastly priced at the top of its range, and, second, when the market decided that it was worth quite a bit more than that. Fastly, welcome to the public markets. (We also caught up with its founder on IPO day, our notes from which can be found here.)

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• IPO date: May 10, 2019
• IPO price: $45 per share
• IPO valuation: $82.4 billion
• Initial post-IPO arc: Down, and then further down.

The Uber IPO was a massive event in both Silicon Valley and Wall Street. The ensuing selloff made dents on both coasts, as shares of Uber slipped after their IPO during their initial trading session. The following session they fell even further.

Uber’s declines are a setback for the firm, yes, but also ding the idea that losses are pretty much ok so long as a company can appoint itself in the garb of a growth company. Uber’s combined slowing growth and persistent losses were too much for public investors to agree to at its IPO price.

Lyft fell during the same period, repricing a large chunk of the global ride-hailing market.

• IPO date: May 2, 2019
• IPO price: $25 per share
• IPO valuation: $1.5 billion
• Initial post-IPO arc: To infinity, and beyond!

The Beyond Meat IPO was a smashing early success. The post-meat firm quickly tripled its value, making its sector hotter than a vegan burger on a grill. However, as we wrote previously, the firm is trading dangerously high above its fundamentals?

Beyond Meat is currently worth $4.0 billion, a slight uptick from its first-day performance. That gives it a 227.6x multiple on��. That figure is slightly exaggerated by the fact that the company has low gross margins (about 20 percent in 2018), making its gross profit multiple more dramatic than you might presume from a flat revenue multiple.

So expect this one to grow like hell, and keep its valuation, or see it repriced to something a bit saner. Either way, a big win for the meatless shop. (And its sector!)

• IPO date: May 3, 2019
• IPO price: $11 per share
• IPO valuation: $2.4 billion
• Initial post-IPO arc: Up from bottom-level pricing, but not enough to make headlines.

This IPO was a bit quiet in terms of U.S. media attention, but it was the successful flotation of another China-based unicorn on the domestic markets. More from Crunchbase News here.

• IPO date: April 18, 2019
• IPO price: $19 per share
• IPO valuation: $10 billion (CNBC figure)
• Initial post-IPO arc: Big and good.

The Pinterest IPO pricing was somewhat of a letdown for folks hoping that it would price��up from its final private price. But then Pinterest’s stock went ahead and climbed. So now it’s worth more. Indeed, as I write this, it’s worth over $15 billion. So��there,��naysayers.

Pinterest going public was the end of a very long saga, but one that closed on an up-note for the company.

• IPO date: April 18, 2019
• IPO price: $36 per share
• IPO valuation: $9.2 billion
• Initial post-IPO arc: It went kaboom. In a good way.

The dark horse of 2019 IPOs, Zoom stormed the media with its epic S-1, and then kicked butt after going public. (At least initially, we cannot see the future.) Today worth around $20 billion according to Google Finance, Zoom is the breakout success story of the year thus far.

Pro tip: Make money while growing quickly, and everyone will talk about you.

• IPO date: April 12, 2019
• IPO price: $24 per share
• IPO valuation: $1.8 billion (TradingView metric)
• Initial post-IPO arc: Strong market response.

The PagerDuty IPO put points on the board for the world of B2B SaaS, a huge startup category and the fount of many a hopeful venture return. The huge initial success of PagerDuty’s IPO underscored the market’s willingness, in April at least, to snap up SaaS shares despite pressure on companies like Box and Dropbox in the months leading up to its debut.

PagerDuty is unprofitable, but has incredibly high-value revenue (recurring, high gross margin). That fact was likely helpful during its IPO process.��

Read our look at its S-1 here, and the rest here.

• IPO date: March 29, 2019
• IPO price: $72 per share
• IPO valuation: $24 billion
• Initial post-IPO arc: Exuberance, followed by declines and a massive hangover.

The Lyft IPO marked the start of the unicorn IPO run of 2019. Beating Uber to the public market, Lyft had big growth, and towering losses to match. Its pricing run was strong, and the company priced at the top of its raised range. And then, Lyft opened up more than $10 over its IPO price.

All things looked good. But then Lyft’s stock began to drift down. Quickly falling under its IPO price, Lyft wasn’t helped by the public launch of Uber’s IPO, the expected price of which may have pressured Lyft’s stock even more. As of the time of writing, Lyft is worth only a billion dollars more than its final private price.

Read our look at its S-1 here, and the rest here.

Super League Gaming

, an esports company, went public on Feb. 26, 2019. The company, according to , sports a “proprietary cloud-based platform [which] provides amateur gamers a modernized way to connect, play and view games in real-time.” Per , in practice, that means that the company “holds local competitions for games like Minecraft and League of Legends in theaters, cafes” and other locations.

We all know by now that Twitch and esports are big deals. However, the new offering went out at $11 per share before falling under $10 during its first day’s trading. Super League Gaming raised around $25 million in its debut.

Why did its shares fall right out of the gate? The company has a slim $1.05 million in revenue during calendar 2018. That was up from just over $200,000 in 2017. However, the��company lost a staggering $20.6 million in 2018. That’s one of the worst net margins I’ve ever seen.

Super League Gaming, then, is a growth play and an early IPO. Most companies stay private when they are this unprofitable. It will be interesting to see how the market values the small esports shop moving forward.

Notes

To qualify for this list, a company must list on a United States-based exchange, must report at least $1 of revenue in the past year, and be a member of the larger tech community.

For historical coverage, check out our tally of US-listed tech IPOs from 2018.

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Boston-based , , ,��, and several angel investors also participated in the round. Accel’s will join the company’s board as part of the financing.

The San Francisco-based company says it “gives more people the ability to create powerful websites and applications without having to write code.” With over 45,000 customers, including and , Webflow says it is profitable and, according to , has been for two years with annualized revenue of over $20 million. It plans to use the new capital to build out its executive team and hire in general. (The company currently has over 120 employees, up from about 70 a year ago, according to CEO and co-founder ).

Webflow also wants to continue growing its customer base, and plans to invest in “extensibility, accessibility, performance, security, and data privacy” to do so. Current customers range from individual freelancers to Fortune 500 companies. They include Johnson & Johnson, Yelp, and Adobe, among others.

A $72 million round for a company of 120 people is quite outsized; presumably the firm will hire rapidly to scale its workforce to match its capital base. Or in more crass terms, the company will quickly expand its spend. (This is a standard move post-financing for nearly any startups, we’re merely reacting to the scale of new funds that Webflow now has at its disposal compared to its new capital base.)

In a , detailed the company’s early struggles, noting the company launched almost six years ago. Several months later, the company was accepted into . But the company’s trio of co-founders were struggling. All had left their previous jobs, according to Magdalin, “and had no meaningful income.” Magdalin had cashed out his 401-K to pay for surgery for one of his daughters, and he and his wife “had racked up over $50K in credit card debt.”

Webflow eventually landed $2.9M from several seed funds and angels, with contributing more than half its seed round.

Not Alone

While Webflow’s Series A is certainly outsized compared to historical norms, the company is in raising such a huge sum for what should be its first institutional round (the real definition of a Series A). Indeed, some other entrants for large nine-figure Series A financings in 2019 include for biotech company , for London-based fintech startup , and for South Korean cryptocurrency exchange platform .

The list continues. Turning to China, for example, raised a , for supply chain focused business and more.

In short, yes, Webflow’s Series A round is abnormal historically. It is also perfectly normal when it comes to 2019.

Illustration: .

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But Crunchbase data indicates that those two valuations are more than impressive one-offs. In fact, 2019 is tracking to becoming a historic year for female-founded unicorns. ��While still rare, they’re being born at an unprecedented rate.

For context, last year there were 12 unicorns born that had at least one female founder, globally. Less than half way into 2019, 10 female-founded companies have become unicorns.

The chart below shows how many companies with at least one female founder passed the $1 billion in valuation mark each year, starting in 2005. 1

The 2019 list includes the following companies: , , , , ezCater, , Glossier, Horizon Robotics, , and .

What Founders Say

The first female-founded company to gain unicorn status this year was FabFitFun, which sells lifestyle subscription boxes to women. We caught up with the founder, , who has advice for fellow companies on this list: partner with other women. ��

“When we do look at the landscape, and categories and fashion, which are obviously female consumer driven, who’s running those businesses today?” she said. “The majority are still older white men.”

With FabFitFun, she said she made it a point to “intentionally seek out people who don’t fit that mold” to partner with for products. That intentionality, she said, has been powerful.

When it comes to applying that same perspective to investors in her company, she has fewer options since VCs still skew male.

“On one hand, it’s really important to brands to just find the best fit of [someone] who understands the company, no matter what the gender is,” she said. “But naturally, there’s a little bit of tension here because there are less female VCs than male VCs.”

That tension has its impact. Last quarter, for example, only 17 percent of venture capital dollars were invested in companies with at least one female founder. Of that, 2 percent was invested in companies with only female founders.

Other than being a unicorn, and female-founded, Glossier and Rent the Runway were rare because they were also female-focused companies. Let’s look at some companies that aren’t.

Widening The Scope

Other companies on our female-founded list, like Grab and ezCater focus on ride-hailing, or catering, respectively.

Grab co-founder, , said that “good ideas and innovation can come from anybody and from all corners of the globe.” She explained how Grab, for example, was founded along with . The idea for the company grew from the need for a reliable solution for women to travel late at night in Malaysia. That concept has since grown.

“Grab has moved beyond transport to become the region’s leading super app, offering payments, financial services, food delivery, parcel delivery and a whole suite of other services to millions in Southeast Asia,” she said.

While she said that the focus of Grab has always been beyond gender, more than 40 percent of its workforce is women.

, CEO of , told me that “on paper, VCs will fund women-led companies,” she said. In person is when the bias pops up, she said.

Referring to a , Vosmek said she still worries that even the ‘click of the heels’ of a female founder walking into a room can sway VCs to have bias.

Quartz, a business publication, ��recently listed the top 10 biggest companies that have gone public or filed. According to its ranking,

None of the companies on the list have been led by a woman. The most women on any executive team or corporate board is three, according to S-1 filings, the story outlines.

It’s a small reminder that while indicators of progress are peeking out, we are still working toward a world where wearing heels, and scoring venture capital aren’t mutually exclusive.

Illustration: .

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News broke yesterday that IPO is racing towards us, with the popular ride-hailing company , and the company ready to . The unicorn, which originally filed privately late last year, looks set to beat rival to the public markets.

A final tidbit of information came out yesterday that caught our eye. According , who broke the story on Feb. 20 concerning Lyft’s impending roadshow, “Lyft now expects to be valued at between $20 billion and $25 billion in its IPO.”

I couldn’t recall where that valuation fit compared to Lyft’s preceding valuations, and, honestly, what its most-recently known revenue figures were. My brain is an Uber-mush. So, let’s quickly recall what we knew, and stack those data points next to Lyft’s expected price tag.

History Lessons

Let’s rewind the clock to 2017. Reported in early 2018, Lyft detailed some of its financial performance. According to : “Ride hailing��[sic] company Lyft says it booked over $1 billion in GAAP revenue for 2017, and showed revenue growth of 168% in Q4 versus the prior year’s quarter.”

That’s a useful set of metrics as it includes an absolute revenue result and a growth pace.

A quick note on what the statement means, however. In corporate accounting, “GAAP,” an acronym, means “no bullshit.” So, when we see “GAAP revenue” in the case of this Lyft metric, we can assume that the $1 billion revenue result is something near to what the company could report in an IPO filing; it’s not polluted with stuff that won’t eventually count as revenue.

From that 2017 result, we can turn to what Lyft did in 2018. For more detail on Lyft’s performance during the first half of 2018, read this summary. If you don’t have time (I understand), here’s the short version: Lyft’s revenue grew from $412 million in the first half of 2017 to $909 million in the first half of 2018. That’s a growth rate of over 120 percent.

However, the growth and larger revenue base cost Lyft: The ride-hailing��unicorn lost $255 million in the first half of 2017 (precisely what this metric counts isn’t clear, so treat it as more directional than definitive), and $373 million in the first half of 2018.

Lyft’s Growth

We don’t have an H2’2018 Lyft revenue result, sadly. But we can make up our own by using different growth rates. The resulting figure will let us see what sort of revenue multiple the ride-hailing company could enjoy at valuations of $20 billion and $25 billion.

Presuming that Lyft grew its H2’2018 revenue by, say, 30 percent from its H1’2018 total would give the company about $2.1 billion in revenue. At a $20 billion valuation, the company is worth just under 10 times its 2018 revenue haul. At $25 billion, the figure rises to a multiple of just under 12.

(Reference articles on changes to the IPO filing process rule book can be found , and .)

For fun, push up Lyft’s growth pace, boosting its H2’2018 revenue, as far as you think fair, and see what the change does to the implied revenue multiple range that Lyft could enjoy in 2019. At 40 percent H1’2018 to H2’2018 growth, for example, Lyft’s full-year revenue reaches nearly $2.2 billion. Its revenue multiples at $20 and $25 billion slip to 9.2 and 11.5. At 50 percent they fall to 8.8x and 11x flat.

Are those rich, neutral, or stingy revenue multiples? Let’s ask Uber.

Uber At $120B

Uber’s fourth-quarter financial results recently came out (our coverage here), but what we want more than a quarter’s view is a full-year tally. So, let’s lean on :

“Compared to the entire fiscal year of 2017, Uber’s gross bookings increased 45 percent, to $50 billion in 2018. That resulted in a GAAP revenue increase of 43 percent, from 2017 to $11.3 billion. Losses also improved (decreased) from $2.2 billion in adjusted EBITDA losses in 2017 to $1.8 billion in 2018.”

The figure we care about the most there is the $11.3 billion figure. Recall that Uber’s rumored IPO valuation is $120 billion. When we last compared Uber’s results to the price tag, we didn’t have its fourth-quarter results. We do now!

At a valuation of $120 billion, Uber is worth about 10.6x its 2018 revenue tally. That’s right in the same range as what Lyft is reportedly aiming for. However, Uber is growing more slowly than its smaller rival in percentage terms (this is when scale becomes an effective incumbency tax in side-by-side percentage growth comparisons!).

If Uber can command a similar revenue multiple despite larger losses (in gross terms; we’ll have a better idea of relative performance when we have both S-1s) and slower growth (implied via recent performance; again, we’ll see) will be interesting. Certainly Uber has more of a global story to tell. Lyft, in contrast, has a domestic tale alone.

So What?

Summing for those of us who got bored, Lyft’s reported target IPO valuations seem pretty in line with what Uber is expecting for itself. How effective each company will be at convincing investors that it’s the special one of the two isn’t clear, but they are seemingly close in terms of targets for now.

With Lyft just over the horizon, get hyped. We’re finally going to get some gosh-darn decacorn liquidity (Dropbox wasn’t worth $10 billion when it went public, so its IPO doesn’t count) and that’s exciting.

More when we get our mitts on the S-1.

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You thought that a preview��and a recap and ��were all we had to report on the 2019 technology IPO market? Not a chance.

�� �� �� �� �� �� ��Follow Crunchbase News on��

Despite and a and and , hype continues to build for next year’s IPO cohort, with extra eyes fixed on the larger offerings. Media and founders and investors alike are gearing up for a big year of returns.

Which isn’t a rare��December occurrence, to be fair. It’s to and find all sorts of wrong predictions on when IPOs would take place. We’ve even mocked that some. But no matter, let’s talk nuts and bolts and dreams.

Get Out While It’s Still Summer

The public market has stuttered��several times in the past few years (some color here, and here), but now a decade or so into this bull market there is fresh talk about a correction, slowdown, or some sort of return to normalcy.

All and any of that would be bad for tech companies looking to go public that were last valued in more forgiving times. So, if you want to go public while avoiding a valuation haircut, ��(get out while the Nasdaq is over 7,000, in other words).

Uber and Lyft, for example, filed before many expected. They both lose money at impressive rates (, in the same period). So they are likely going out more quickly than other expected 2019 IPOs.

For companies with better financials, there’s more flexibility. Airbnb is on an adjusted (EBITDA) basis, which means it can better set terms for its debut apart from the market itself. (How I’m thinking about this: If you need to raise capital in your IPO, you’ll have less leverage regarding pricing than companies who don’t need to raise operating capital in their flotation.)

My view on comparative market pessimism regarding super-unprofitable companies looking to go public next year is built on public investor reaction to Snap and Domo. Sure, they are growing, but dear Lord at what cost? That sort of thing.

Our hackish Summer analogy for the public market landscape that private companies��have to debut into gets potentially chillier as time goes along. That means the first half of 2019 could include more offerings than we might have expected, especially if an early debut goes strong.1

The List

So who are we talking about? Here’s a running list of companies that are in the conversation for a 2019 debut. For the more exotic entries, I’ve included a link to coverage so you don’t think that I’ve spiked my espresso with brake fluid:

• Uber
• Lyft
• Pinterest
• Airbnb
• Slack
• Postmates
• Palantir
• Instacart
• Rackspace (?)
• Robinhood (?)
• Cloudflare
• Zoom (, but alright)
• Didi
• Bytedance ()

You can start to do the math. If Uber goes out at , and , and Pinterest must be worth more than $10 billion due to its private valuation, throw in a bunch more for Didi and Bytedance, stack on what, $12 billion for a Slack IPO, add a few billion more for Postmates and even more for Zoom and Robinhood, and we’re looking at hundreds of billions of dollars in hoped-for value. It’s not too hard to see a quarter trillion or so in new market cap in the above, provided that companies get the valuation they want.

And that’s why IPOs are probably the key narrative in the financial tech world next year. Big funds will continue to close, and I suspect that venture activity will keep screaming along, lagging any public market connections by a few months. But if the big IPOs fail or miss, quite a lot of paper profits will disappear. And with it, I presume, some private capital interest in venture capital will evaporate as well.

That, eventually, could finally slow down tech startups.

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