Spotify Struggles with Business Despite Growing Revenues

There is a whole gamut of small companies with revenues in the range of $50 million-$150 million that are gearing up for an IPO in the next 18 months. However, it is reassuring to see that there are also a few others that have amassed a much higher revenue base and are still working hard to keep themselves private as they set up more robust business models.

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Marketo Grows Nicely, But Profitability in Question

According to Gartner, the CRM market worldwide last year grew 12.7% over the year to $11.9 billion. The researcher estimates that in 2011, the marketing automation software market was worth $2.8 billion. Online marketing services provider Marketo is growing fast in the segment as it prepares for an IPO.

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Evernote Eyes End 2013 IPO

Researcher Info-Tech believes that the growth of mobile devices is helping to advance the consumer technology market faster than the corporate technology market. Among one of the key markets experiencing strong growth is digital note-taking.

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Ruckus Wireless: IPO or Cisco Acquisition?

According to Visiongain’s report, The Wireless Infrastructure Market 2012-2017: Wi-Fi, WiMax, 3G, HSPA+ and LTE,  the global wireless infrastructure market is projected to be worth $43 billion. The wireless market includes core network products for next generation network architectures and wireless transport network technologies for backhaul. Over the next five years, the researcher expects the market to grow in the single digits as operators ramp up capacity in areas like backhaul, aggregation, transport, routing based on Internet protocol (IP), and Ethernet technologies for mobile broadband services.

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Newly Public ServiceNow Performs Well

Following Facebook’s IPO debacle, the market has been somewhat wary of the listing of other IT companies. But recently listed SaaS enterprise IT service management player, ServiceNow, has put concerns to rest for its IPO. Of course, the SaaS IPOs are very different animals from the social media IPOs like Facebook. For one thing, subscription-based SaaS is one of the best, most predictable business models out there, whereas display advertising–based social media businesses tend to be highly volatile and unpredictable. I fully expect all the upcoming SaaS IPOs to have a relatively stable performance in the public market, whereas the display advertising based companies will struggle more. We must note that LinkedIn, a social media company, is largely based on a subscription business model and thus orders of magnitude more stable.

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Rapid7 on the Potential 2013 IPO Roster

According to Gartner, the worldwide security software market grew 7.5% in 2011 to $17.7 billion. The increase was driven by increased adoption by small and medium businesses (SMBs). Last year, Symantec, McAfee, and Trend Micro remained the biggest players in the market and together accounted for 34% of the market share. But smaller players continued to move forward. They reported a combined market share of 56.4% and grew 9.3% over the year.

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Huge IPO Pipeline in the Next 18 Months

We’re seeing a lot of companies in the $50 million-$150 million revenue range looking to go public in the next 18 months. Given how expensive it is to be a public company these days, it seems to me that once public, these companies would have a hard time with the regulatory costs. It would be better to wait a couple years and get to $200 million-$250 million in revenue before taking the leap into the public market. In some cases, we are seeing companies deciding against an IPO until later, which, in our view, is a better strategy.

Meanwhile, here is a list of companies we’ve covered recently that are waiting in the IPO wings:

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Eventbrite in the IPO Pipeline

Social networking giant Facebook has helped define successful business models for several other online players. The ticketing company Eventrbrite is one such example. Eventbrite is expected to file for its IPO by the end of this year.  A couple of years ago, I spoke with  co-founder Julia Hartz on the entrepreneurial story of the company. Here is a review of how the company has fared since then.

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Workday: IPO or Acquisition by Salesforce?

According to a Gartner report, global spending on the Software-as-a-Service (SAAS) market is projected to grow 17.9% this year to $14.5 billion. The market is projected to be worth $22.1 billion by the year 2015. The North American SaaS market is projected to grow from $7.8 billion last year to $9.1 billion this year, while Western Europe will grow from $2.7 billion to $3.2 billion. Within the segment, analysts believe that human capital management (HCM) is becoming an increasingly effective way for on-premise vendors to make further inroads with their clients. HCM players chiefly offer services for recruitment and learning and development and are close to human resources functions like payroll that are already handled by on-premises enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
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Trion World Goes From Zero to $100M in Nine Months

According to the recently released Global Online Gaming Report 2012 by researcher yStats.com, global online gaming revenue is projected to grow by more than 10% annually from 2010 through 2016. A report by DFC Intelligence pegs the online gaming market to be worth $18 billion worldwide. Online gaming publisher Trion Worlds Inc. is counting on this trend as they gear up for an IPO.

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