<story><title>Tech Unicorns Are Going Public at Near-Record Pace</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-unicorns-are-going-public-at-near-record-pace-11545138000</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tenpoundhammer</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been working for a startup that recently exited it seems to be common knowledge in the startup community( and everywhere else? ) that a recession is just around the corner. I&amp;#x27;m definitely not an expert in economics but these are just the pieces I&amp;#x27;ve put together.&lt;p&gt;From what I&amp;#x27;ve heard&amp;#x2F;read the recession will primarily affect stock pricing and available investment assets. Many startups feel that if they don&amp;#x27;t exit now they will never have the opportunity or will have to exit with much lower numbers. This seems like a strong driver of exits.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>It seems nearly everyone always believes that a recession, big disaster slowdown, market crash, Etc is &amp;quot;right around the corner.&amp;quot; And for the last 10 years they have been wrong in the macro sense :-).&lt;p&gt;That said, this was from the article: &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;Many of the tech companies that listed shares in the U.S. were based in China, including some of the largest IPOs of the year, such as online-entertainment services company iQIYI Inc. and Chinese e-commerce company Pinduoduo Inc.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Chinese economy is reacting in all sorts of ways to its new larger size, pressure from the US in trade wars, and pressure at home to spread some of the prosperity around. If you take all of the Chinese companies out of the list, the IPO statistic is unremarkable.&lt;p&gt;What I find most interesting is the Unicorn do or die issue. Which is that many may find it impossible to go to the private equity trough again, that bubble does seem to have deflated. Valuations aside, when you have &lt;i&gt;raised&lt;/i&gt; over a billion dollars that is real money that somebody is going to miss it if you just roll up the carpets and go home.&lt;p&gt;It felt to me that the collapse of Theranos woke up a lot of &amp;#x27;stupid&amp;#x27; money (that is money from people who are investing in a fad but without research). And those folks have said, &amp;quot;Hmm, ok now I&amp;#x27;d like to sell my equity in this company you guys say is worth $X, that means you will pay me $Z for my stake right?&amp;quot; Only to find it doesn&amp;#x27;t work that way, there are no buyers, no liquidity as they say, for those preferred shares. But they can vote and they can tell the CEO, you&amp;#x27;re not getting another penny from us, we&amp;#x27;d like to sell our shares. And that leaves the public markets as the investor of last resort.&lt;p&gt;So it does feel like a Unicorn reckoning is to be had. Where companies will have to prove that a cruel and unemotional market will agree with their lofty valuations. They won&amp;#x27;t all make it over that hump. As the Vikings might say, &amp;quot;There will be songs sung about these days.&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>Tech Unicorns Are Going Public at Near-Record Pace</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-unicorns-are-going-public-at-near-record-pace-11545138000</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tenpoundhammer</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been working for a startup that recently exited it seems to be common knowledge in the startup community( and everywhere else? ) that a recession is just around the corner. I&amp;#x27;m definitely not an expert in economics but these are just the pieces I&amp;#x27;ve put together.&lt;p&gt;From what I&amp;#x27;ve heard&amp;#x2F;read the recession will primarily affect stock pricing and available investment assets. Many startups feel that if they don&amp;#x27;t exit now they will never have the opportunity or will have to exit with much lower numbers. This seems like a strong driver of exits.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>grey-area</author><text>The crash has already begun, a global recession will follow after but that won&amp;#x27;t be till later next year. We&amp;#x27;re in a correction and entering a bear market.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;finance.yahoo.com&amp;#x2F;chart&amp;#x2F;%5EIXIC&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;finance.yahoo.com&amp;#x2F;chart&amp;#x2F;%5EIXIC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Stocks like Amazon and Apple have lost up to 30% in the last few months, and Nasdaq has seen steep declines since the summer. So yes, earlier this year was a good time to IPO. Talking about exiting now with an IPO is definitely a little late, and I pity companies like Uber which have one scheduled for next year.</text></comment>