2016 IPO Prospects: Automattic Needs to Justify Valuation

According to a W3Techs survey conducted in November last year, 25% of the websites globally use WordPress as their content management system. We are avid users of WordPress and love the product. The open-source platfrom’s market share has increased from 13% back in 2011 to 23.3% by January 2015 before ending the year with 25.6% share. Automattic is looking to increase that share to 50% in the next few years, but it has a long way to go.

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2016 IPO Prospects: AppDynamics May Sustain Unicorn Valuation

According to a Gartner report published last year, the application performance monitoring (APM) market grew at a record pace of 15.8% in 2014 to $2.6 billion. Compuware is the market leader with $326.9 million revenues, followed by IBM at $222.6 million. Newer companies are also making their presence felt. The fastest growing vendor in the space was San Francisco-based AppDynamics which reported an impressive 246.5% growth to end last year with an estimated $79 million in revenues.

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2016 IPO Prospects: Actifio Looks Ready

According to IDC, companies worldwide spend close to $44 billion on storage hardware and software to manage copy data. The copy data management market is estimated to grow 5.4% annually over the period 2013 through 2016. Actifio is a fast-growing company in this field that is expected to go public this year. >>>

2016 IPO Prospects: Airbnb Sees Skyrocketing Valuations

According to a PhocusWright report, US travelers spent nearly $23 billion on vacation rentals in 2012. Online booking of vacation rentals had increased from 12% in 2007 to 24% by 2012. The researcher estimated the online share of the market to grow to 30% by the year 2014. San Francisco-based AirBnB is a fast rising online player in the market and a strong IPO prospect for 2016 as well.

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Zulily Went Away on a Flash Deal

Till a few years ago, the flash deals market was a big deal in itself. Companies like Groupon soared into the Unicorn club, riding high on this hype. Other companies like Zulily (Nasdaq: ZU) made the flash deals offering even more attractive by providing niche products. But soon, profitability pressures coupled with high cost of customer acquisition and retention hurt these companies. Many of them have fallen into the unicorpse* status. Zulily may still be worth over a billion dollars, but its valuation has reduced to a fourth since its golden days.

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Care.com Crashes Even Before Joining the Billion Dollar Club

There are quite a few examples of companies that have crashed and turned into a unicorpse* even before reaching the Unicorn status. One such example is that of Care.com (NYSE: CRCM), which was on its way to be a Billion Dollar Unicorn, but sketchy financials have caused the company’s valuation to fall.

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Billion Dollar Unicorns: Atlassian, A Legitimate One, Delivers A Great IPO

We have seen several Billion Dollar Unicorns burning up cash to acquire new customers and jeopardizing their fundamentals. Collaboration software maker Atlassian is strikingly different in this aspect and when it went public on the NASDAQ under the ticker TEAM, it was lapped up.  >>>

From Unicorn to Unicorpse: OnDeck Crashes as Online Lending Sector Struggles

According to Morgan Stanley analysts, within the US, the volume of loans extended by marketplace lenders have doubled every year since 2010 and grew to $14 billion in 2014. The growth is estimated to continue at 47% annually through 2020. But the fast growth of the industry is coming at a cost. Stricter regulations on the industry have caused investors to be cautious and several players are seeing a transition from the Unicorn to the unicorpse* status. Earlier this year, online lender Social Finance pulled the plug on its IPO plans. Other companies that had already listed like Lending Club and OnDeck (NYSE: ONDK) have seen their valuations fall by as much as 50% since their IPO.

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