Twitter is going public in 2013. There, I said it.
And it looks like 2013 is going to be a big year for Initial Public Offerings. Maybe it's just the naive kid in me, but something about IPOs really gets me fired up. I still think it's the only real purpose of the stock market. And there's some big names on tap this year, according to VentureBeat and CB Insights.
CB Insights, which has a pretty impressive track record of predicting who is going public and when, says that there are 472 companies positioned to IPO this year - all currently valued at $100 million or more. VentureBeat then isolated the 17 companies it thought most like to bow over the next 12 months.
Leading off was Box, an enterprise cloud provider founded by 26-year old Aaron Levie. The company is currently valued at $1.2 billion and is shooting for an IPO valuation of between $2-3 billion. Not too shabby for a kid under 30.
e-Payment provider Square also looks ready to roll with a valuation in the neighborhood of $3-4 billion. Online retailer Gilt is ready to go too, and was most recently valued at $1 billion. Dropbox and Eventbrite will also probably happen this year.
Also mentioned was LivingSocial, which absolutely baffles me after the disaster that was Groupon. The company is currently valued at $5 billion (another thing that's got me scratching my head). I just can't believe another Wall Street firm would line up to raise money for a company with zero barriers to entry and a terrible business model. I'd hate to be on the phones selling this one.
And last but certainly not least we have Twitter. I predict (along with these guys) that the whole, "Is you is or is you ain't going public" dance will end this year with a huge IPO. The most recent valuation was $8 billion, but that is definitely on the low side. Look for Twitter to be the biggest IPO of 2013 (or certainly the most hyped).
Which one are you guys looking forward to seeing the most? What impact do you think Google Drive will have on Dropbox's valuation? And is there a better story than Atlassian, started by a couple of Aussie college buddies with $10,000 on a credit card? Man, I love this stuff.
I call Box either trading at or being taken out at $5bn + by 2014.
Does Twitter even have a real revenue generating business model yet? Livingsocial will be a great short if it does go public.
Their promoted Tweet strategy has paid off in spades on mobile, and sent Facebook scrambling for a similar strategy with their "sponsored stories". I saw the number the other day and I was pretty taken aback. And that's just one piece of their revenue stream.
can anyone opine on the retail and large institutional demand following facebook? or are our memories just that short?
Square looks the most promising to me as it has the potential to revolutionize payment of goods/services. The business model at a glance is clear and it seems to me it has more direct revenue generating potential than for instance Facebook, Twitter etc. (charging a % rate per transaction to consumers, and charging merchants a flat fee for offering payment via Square). Given Howard Schulz (Starbucks) has forged an alliance with Square and is involved as a board member shows strength as well.
I do have some concerns as at a first glance it is hard to find any barriers to entry to this market and it seems competitors have developed their own similar services (iZettle, Sailpay and Globalpay) furthermore the more well known credit card companies are entering the market as well (American Express, Mastercard). Which makes me wonder if Square will either pursue differentiation or a price leader strategy. My concern is that the market will soon be flooded by competitors competing on price. Furthermore given how credit card payment is way more frequent in the US I wonder how this entire market can cross the boarder to Europe and other markets where credit card payment is not as common.
Serious question on Square:
How is it any better than traditional payment methods? Like, I understand that it's a small device you can attach to an iPad / iPhone or whatever and then accept credit card payments, but what is more special about it than traditional credit card payment systems?
I've read about it before and all, so maybe I'm a bit cloudy on it, but I'm very curious.
Also, re: Twitter. Twitter is actually making way more money than one would expect. I used to be a total hater, but then I started using it and realized it blows Facebook out of the water. I spend way more time on Twitter than I do on facebook and I don't even tweet myself. It's like TV in social media form because it's got channels of sorts for everything.
Square is cheaper.. I can chose expensive hardware from Verifone, complicated contracts and agreements etc. Or I can get a free dongle that has 2.75% swipe for my business and a suite of software to back it up with no contract. MC/Visa are typically about 3% and Amex charges as high as 5-6% to the merchant.
Sail has already been cancelled citing razor thing margins. Square will really start to make money as they move into emerging markets and other revenue generating business (SAAS for small business.. watch them move into areas like accounting software, inventory management, etc to generate revenue from existing customers)
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