When you look at these results, it doesn't seem too risky to invest in a tech IPO, especially if the company "makes sense" [1]. These companies sound like solid businesses: Atlassian, Shopify, Square, Twilio.
This metric would have probably excluded Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Lyft. I think Uber will also be a gamble. But PagerDuty seems like a solid company that will do well, and a far less risky investment than a social / ridesharing service.
Can anyone point out cases where a "reasonable" [1] company ended up underperforming or crashing a few years after an IPO?
[1] E.g. HN comments are generally positive, instead of "this is ridiculous".
How does the IPO works in US? Do retail investors get to subscribe to the IPO shares before the listing date? Or the retails investors can only "buy" the shares once they start trading on the exchanges?
> Do retail investors get to subscribe to the IPO shares before the listing date?
Generally no, especially if it's in high demand. My broker allows retail investors to place bids if they have over $250k in their account and agree, as a condition of having access to future IPOs, not to sell within 30 days. However there's still no guarantee of having your order filled.
The prices I quoted were from the first day of trading, not the IPO.
TEAM up 4.1x since Dec 2015
TWLO up 4.7x since Jun 2016
SHOP up 7.4x since May 2015
OKTA up 4x since Apr 2017
ZS up 2x since Mar 2018
Retail investors can definitely still make money.