Stripe has been arguably one of the most anticipated IPOs of 2023, making several end-of-the-year lists (including ours). It was also one of the highest-valued decacorns in 2022. And yet, when the company was valued at $95 billion in 2021, Stripe co-founder said there were .Ěý

But it looks like his tune has changed. The company is looking to solve the issue of 10-year stock units awarded to veteran employees that are . It’s an issue several companies Stripe’s size will face as the IPO market all but closed up in 2022.Ěý

One way for Stripe to resolve the issue is to take the decacorn public. Founded in 2010, the company has raised around $2.2 billion since then — most recently a $600 million Series H in 2021. It has dual headquarters, in San Francisco and in Dublin, Ireland.

Looking at the secondary marketĚý

The other option Stripe may be considering is allowing stockholders to sell shares on the secondary markets.Ěý

As an employee retention tool, it’s unclear what the best picture is for Stripe, which has operated privately for 13 years. According to data from secondary markets platform , almost half of the investor activity on its platform in 2020 was around companies that were 10 years or older. In Q4 of last year, that interest nosedived to 8% — .Ěý

That’s pretty surprising, considering that the majority of tech company activity on the secondary markets are centered around established, pre-IPO dinosaurs such as Stripe. But given the state of overhyped valuations and the frosty market, perhaps investors are hesitant to buy shares.

Further reading

• Stripe Reportedly Lowers Internal Valuation
• When there Are No IPOs, All Eyes Are On The Secondary Markets
• Unicorn Valuations Are On The Chopping Block

Illustration:

This year has been the opposite of last year’s when it comes to the number of companies going public. But as the IPO summer drought drags on, we looked at some of the bountiful seasons for companies going public and more specifically those companies that made the most of their moment in the spotlight.Ěý

Ringing that bell

Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Jeff Thomas spends his days helping companies go public.

He’s also had a front row seat to witness how the exchange has evolved the signature moment of an IPO—ringing the opening bell.

The bell-ringing ceremony is always a hot topic when Nasdaq works with a company for an IPO, Thomas said. It’s often the CEO or a co-founder who rings the bell, but not always.

Nasdaq tries to make the ceremony as inclusive as possible and include as many people as they can on the stage to make the moment not about one person, but the team that got the company there, Thomas said.

But the COVID-19 pandemic threw a wrench in how the exchange celebrated IPOs. Since then, there have been virtual bell-ringing ceremonies, IPOs on site at a company’s headquarters, and even a bell-ringing ceremony in the metaverse.Ěý

Here is a countdown to my top favorites of recent years.

#5

When Square (NYSE:SQ) went public in 2015, it actually held its IPO outside the New York Stock Exchange. CEO ’s mother, Marcia, had the honor of ringing the opening bell by Lilybelle Flowers owner Cheri Mims. While this IPO happened several years ago, it’s a favorite because Dorsey’s mom is a mom and that’s cute.

#4

Uber (NYSE:UBER) faced a dilemma when it went public in 2019. CEO , the face of the company for so long, had been ousted two years before the company went public. Former Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi eventually took over, and there were questions swirling over whether Kalanick or stand on the balcony with other executives. He hadn’t exactly left the company on friendly terms.

The company went another direction instead. Uber’s first intern, Austin Geidt, ended up ringing the bell for the IPO. Geidt started as an intern for Uber in 2010 and worked her way up the ranks, so it seemed fitting for her to have the honor, and it’s why it’s a favorite.

#3

When Sportradar (NASDAQ: SRAD) went public in 2021, its IPO was star-studded. Included in the New York opening bell ceremony was basketball superstar Michael Jordan—an investor in Sportradar. Nasdaq’s Thomas pointed out that it wasn’t the first time a celebrity’s been involved in an opening ceremony. Jessica Alba, for example, was on hand during The Honest Company’s IPO that same year.

#2 Journey

This isn’t an IPO, but I included it on this list because it’s one of the more memorable opening bell ceremonies. The executive team at Journey rang the opening bell at the Nasdaq, but in the metaverse.Ěý

“It was important to us to be the first exchange to open markets in the metaverse,” Thomas said. “We always want to think of our exchange as the home for innovative technology.”

Thomas anticipated it wouldn’t be the last time the Nasdaq opens by ringing the bell in the metaverse as more companies pivot toward that frontier. The exchange tries to incorporate its companies’ technology when it can, such as when it had Sonos create a new sound for its bell during the company’s IPO.

#1

Airbnb’s IPO in December 2020 is definitely a standout. One of the most anticipated IPOs of 2020, Airbnb (NASDAQ: ABNB) spent 12 years as a private company.Ěý

Nasdaq originally suggested hosts in every single timezone in the world ring a bell leading up to the IPO, Thomas said. The very first Airbnb guests would ring the final doorbell at the apartment on Rausch Street in San Francisco, the original Airbnb where the company’s co-founders once lived. The co-founders would open the door to greet their first guests who they hosted more than a decade ago.Ěý

But then the second wave of COVID-19 hit, and those plans were scrapped. Instead, Nasdaq worked with Airbnb to develop a video of hosts around the world ringing bells, until the first Airbnb guest, Amol, rang the doorbell of the original apartment on Rausch Street.Ěý

“It wasn’t about them, itĚý was about the hosts,” Thomas said. “It was about being inclusive, global. Of course, of all the unique places you can stay, but bringing it back to where it started.”

Illustration:

Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily

The selloff comes after and posted disappointing IPO results and the tech sector itself has come under increasing regulatory scrutiny. News that and could come under anti-trust scrutiny in the United States spooked investors, worried that regulators could crack down on profitable enterprises or even break up platform players.

But while the big shops are driving the big headlines, one slice of tech that we track carefully had a particularly bad day. Let’s talk about SaaS.

Trending Down

Software-as-a-service companies, better known as SaaS shops, have found favor with public market investors for building high-margin, recurring revenues. Investors covet the firms as their revenue is high quality and dependable. That means that they have high revenue multiples, or, more simply, that they are worth more than most other companies per dollar of revenue that they record.

It is unsurprising then, that, over time, SaaS companies have done well. The continued rise of , the recent Zoom boom, and other SaaS-y players’ successes have been impressive. Indeed, SaaS stocks’ performance has been so strong that every company going public wants to mimic their revenue multiples, .

Tracking that success, long-time Crunchbase News readers will recall, is Bessemer’s new cloud index, an effort with the Nasdaq to keep a good eye on the market for SaaS stocks.

Here is what is put up today, in terms of points:

In chart form, inclusive of today’s trading, this is what it looks like:

It’s rough out there. After a nearly ten-year bull cycle, stocks are showing weakness yet again. Tech stocks were pounded yesterday amidst broader declines. The crypto world endured stinging losses as well, pushing bitcoin closer to $4,000 than $5,000. The token has seen its value fall from over $19,000 in late 2017.

Follow Crunchbase News on

More losses are . The tech-heavy Nasdaq’s futures are off about 1.5 percent, an hour ahead of the market’s open.

Let’s quickly take stock of what took hits, and then gist those results down to how we view the startup market. Consider this post a short thread trying to link the public and private markets. Yes, Crunchbase News is focused a bit closer to the ground, but the weather matters no matter your altitude.

Stocks

Major tech companies and smaller players alike fell yesterday. The Big 5 (, , , , ) shed about $150 billion in market cap, falling to $3.51 trillion. That figureĚýcrested the $4 trillion mark this year, for reference. Chinese giants fell as well, with and shedding around 3 percent apiece.

Shifting to smaller companies we can see even bigger hits than the nearly 6 percent that Facebook gave up, or the 5 percent that Amazon dropped.

slipped by nearly 7 percent, while Salesforce dropped nearly 9 percent. lost over 7 percent, leaving it worth about two quarters more than its IPO price. Staying on the SaaS theme, lost over 14 percent, while slid over 9.5 percent. was off nearly 11.5 percent as well. If it sells recurring software or tooling, it probably lost a lot of worth yesterday.

Chip player kept its fall going, sliding 12 percent to $144 and change. was off nearly 7 percent to $6.05 (IPO price: $17). fell nearly 11 percent. ? Down 5 percent. The list keeps going.

So What?

We’ve seen broad selloffs like this before in 2018 as the market’s momentum seemingly stalled. If this one will stick isn’t clear.

If the above losses do persist, however, they will represent another repricing of the value of technology indistry revenue, profit, and growth. The same things that startups are also valued on (though with less focus on profitability for obvious reasons). And, as the public market operates as a comp for private companies if the former goes down, the latter also sheds expected value (mostly).

Why? Because public markets helps set exit valuations. Dropbox is worth less today as a public company than it was as a private company. That could dampen enthusiasm among private-market investors (VCs, PE firms, etc) for shares in yet-public firms looking for capital. Result? Smaller valuations.

And if the Nasdaq falls sharply, expect it to dampen private investor sentiment as a rule of thumb.

Crypto

If yesterday was bad for tech stocks, and therefore technology startups, what’s happened in crypto is even worse.

Bitcoin fell from its comfortable range in the mid-$6,000s into the $5,000s at first. Overnight it fell under $5,000. It’s worth less than $4,500 as I type. The broader crypto market has lost about 30 percent of its value in the last week, falling from an aggregate value of around $215 billion to $146 billion.

But sharp declines and sharp recoveries are par for the course in crypto, so why care about this particular jolt? Because bitcoin, instead of bouncing back from its lengthy summer doldrums has broken negative. It’s cratering instead of recovering. And when bitcoin drops sharply, the value of every other token falls as well. So goes bitcoin, so goes the market for bitcoin competitors.

So What?

There’s a huge amount of startup activity that is threatened by the above declines. Some directly, as there are companies built around specific coins that are losing a lot of their liquid worth. There are ICOs sitting on crypto assets that were stored for later use; those reserves are now worth far, far less than they were, potentially harming development budgets. And there are crypto-focused venture groups that have made bets across the sector that aren’t having a good day.

Finally, the crypto-majors like the newly-capitalizedĚý are impacted. Coinbase charges a spread () on certain crypto transactions, to pick an example. Those incomes could fall with the slipping price of crypto-assets available for sale on the platform. And when is pushing zero-fee crypto trading, trading platforms may be under pricing pressure as well.

Today is already off to a bad start with more crypto declines, and the major public indices projecting sharp losses. More from us when things shake out.

Illustration:

Welcome to Q3 2018 Earnings Season, coming to you live through the prism of market uncertainty.

Follow Crunchbase News on

Unlike other recent quarters, tech shares do not seem poised to report another strong quarter while the major indicesĚýrise. Instead, tech may prove to be more of a mixed bag from a results perspective this cycle, and is busy reporting its performance in an unsteady stock market.

Yesterday’s action was tough. Markets were down, but tech fell even more sharply. Here’s :

“Stocks plummeted on Wednesday as a sharp drop in tech shares and worries about corporate earnings added fuel to this month’s steep pullback.

TheĚýĚýdropped 608.01 points at 24,583.42 and erased all of its gains for 2018. TheĚý dropped 3.1 percent to 2,656.10 and also turned negative for the year. TheĚýĚýfell 4.4 percent to 7,108.40— entering correction territory — as Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Alphabet all traded lower.”

A few things to note from that. First that the two key, non-tech American indicesĚýhave lost their gains for the year, and one is negative. And second, that the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell even further, entering correction territory (a 10 percent or greater decline in value). Those are big, and bad, bits of news. Especially as many private techĚýcompanies are .

I’d wager that 2019 won’t be the year of tardy unicorn IPOs if the market keeps deteriorating.

Looking more specifically,Ěý was down a mile yesterday (8.6 percent). As was , its future partner (8.77 percent). was down (5.76 percent). and were off over 7 percent apiece. fell to nearly a dollar. Ěýlost huge chunks of value (9.4 percent).

And the Big Five (Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, Facebook) lost over $183 billion in aggregate market cap at once. And this all came after we noted that SaaS and cloud stocks were under pressure.

It was hard, really, to find anyone up in regular trading. However, good job to , which rose 3.4 percent yesterday.

A Small Reprieve

There has been some good news since markets closed Wednesday afternoon.

reported a profit, sending its shares higher. smashed expectations, and despite more slowdown in percent growth at its cloud computing group, rose after reporting earnings. And this morning,Ěý is up like a rocket after beating expectations. (: “Shares of Twitter Inc. are soaring 13% […] after the company reported better-than-expected revenue and earnings for the third quarter, though monthly user numbers fell short of expectations.”)

But that’s a thin veneer of positivity on the hide of yesterday’s declines. It will take a lot more of all that to get things back to normal.

Top Image Credit: .

The Nasdaq is off just over a percent this morning to 6,937 and change. That’s under the notable 7,000 point threshold, and far below its 52-week (and all time) high ofĚý7,637. Other indices have taken a beating as well.

Follow Crunchbase News on &

So how bad is the carnage, and should we care? Let’s go through some of the damage before we try to answer the second question. Bear in mind, of course, that the Nasdaq hit its records earlier this month. That’s just weeks ago.

Yesterday, the Nasdaq vomited almost 3 percent onto its own shirt, as some of tech’s hottest companies gave back ground. Here’s a narrated butcher’s report, :

Facebook shares contributed to tech’s losses, as they fell 4.9 percent after Bank of America Merrill Lynch reduced its price target on the stockĚý.Ěý […]

Tech shares were also under pressure after Reuters reported Nvidia is temporarily suspending self-driving tests. The news sent the stock down 7.8 percent. Tesla shares also fell 8.2 percent […]

Twitter fell 12 percent after short-sellerĚý. […] Netflix declined more than 6.1 percent.

But that is only part of the picture. Here are another set of numbers to help contextualize the recent tech selloff:

• On average, the Big 5 (Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft) are off 13.64 percent from their 52-week highs—also their all-time highs.
• Microsoft is off the least, falling just 8.18 percent from its all-time high. Facebook is off the most, having given back over 22 percent of its worth.
• After putting downĚýeven more yesterday, the big five have shed around $55 billion in value today alone.
• Only two 2017 U.S.-listed technology IPOs are up today; the rest are down.
• A single 2016 U.S.-listed technology IPO is up today; the rest are down.

And we don’t have a real-time listing from the Bessemer Cloud Index, but Alteryx is down, Cloudera is down, Okta is down, Yext is down, as are Dropbox, Hubspot, Atlassian, Workday, Box, and others. So, presumably, cloud stocks are in the middle of a rough patch.

All that sums to the following: tech shares are somewhat correcting across both size and sector. However, what’s to keep in mind is that these firms are still richly valued. The Nasdaq only ripped through the 7,000 mark for the first time earlier this year (it’s March). And investors are still paying over 27 times Microsoft’s earnings, along with over 31 times Google’s (Google Finance API data). And don’t forget what Salesforce just paid for Mulesoft (a lot) and how well Dropbox just did in its public offering (super well).

So tech is still doing very well, just not as good as it was.

From TheĚý:

• The giant funding rounds keep coming. Now it’s insurance providerĚý, which has raised $165 million at a reported $3 billion valuation. The five-year-old, New York-based company is co-founded by Josh Kushner, brother of Jared Kushner.

• VC firms are scaling up too. Technology VCĚýĚýjust filed to raise $1.8 billion for its latest fund, which will be its largest ever. The filing follows a string of big exits for the Silicon Valley firm, which was an early investor in Snap, MuleSoft, AppDynamics and others.

Shyp shutters delivery service

• , a service for packing and shipping items, is shutting down. Founded in 2013, Shyp had raised over $60 million in venture funding. Its CEO points to an early focus on chasing consumers rather than businesses as a key factor behind the company’s losses.

• VR camera makerĚýĚýis closing down after raising $215 million over the past decade. A large number of employees will reportedly now be joining Google.

As the domestic markets came to a close on Thursday, something caught our eye that we wanted to highlight: Snap and Twitter are now (nearly) worth the same amount. It’s been a long time coming, in a sense, and it speaks either well of Twitter or poorly of Snap—or some hybrid of both.

Follow Crunchbase News on &

We’re flagging the moment as it’s close enough to count, even though, at the precise moment we took the pertinent screenshots, the firms were merely very close to sharing the same value.ĚýIf that’s not good enough for you, I am pleased to pass along a note from the local chapter of the Pedants Anonymous: You’re late.

One last pre-note before the data: According to Wolfram Alpha’s Ěýwe can see that, back in July, the two were quite close in terms of their respective market caps. But it wasn’t until Snap’s recent earnings miss that they wound up mostly in-sync.

With all that in our pocket, here’s the math per :

As you can quickly sum, Snap is worth just about $0.47 more than Twitter, which is quite the turn of affairs.

Before Snap went public, Twitter was in the tank and persistently whacked by investors for slow user growth and a history of GAAP losses. At the time, Snap was quickly expanding its userbaseĚýwhile its revenue exploded. Its losses were, at best, secondary to its growth.

Now Twitter and Snap have traded places. Twitter is showing nearly-surprising signs of life, with growing DAU results and a push for GAAP profits. Snap, in contrast, is far under its IPO price. It has also missed revenue and user growth targets. Both misses have served to make its huge unprofitability less cute and more biting.

Snap is now worth billions less than it was valued at at the time of its . Twitter, in fairness, is also below its IPO price. However, Twitter has rebounded from its lows while Snap is currently mired in its own.

For startups, the lesson is simple enough: Even incredibly quick year-over-year revenue growth is not enough to save you in the real markets. In fewer words: Twitter’s public-market recovery as it heads into GAAP profits isn’t a surprise.

And Snap once all the math was done.