Good morning, Term Sheet readers.
Last week was one to remember for tech companies going public: DoorDash, Airbnb, and C3.ai all more than doubled in their initial public offerings, valuing the combined companies upward of $140 billion on an undiluted basis as of Monday. The enormous pops fanned criticism once more that IPOs were being mispriced and that money was being left on the table (and while I won’t go into it now, there are some worthy reads arguing some of this criticism is overdone).
Now after seeing these extreme first-day pops, unicorns Affirm and Roblox have both reportedly pushed their listing timetable back to 2021, per the Wall Street Journal. Roblox in particular is said to be seeking a way to potentially take advantage of a pop. It hasn’t helped that the Securities and Exchange Commission has been flooded with listing filings. The fintech lender and gaming company were previously set to close out the busiest December for IPOs in history.
At any rate, even without companies doing anything to tamp down and capitalize on the first-day pop, the phenomenon may curtail itself naturally if BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s predictions are anything to go by. The chief executive cautioned that “there are going to be many accidents” around the recent IPO ebullience during a fintech conference.
But for now, 2021 is looking to be another bang-up year for startups going public. Names also considering going public include Robinhood, Instacart, Nextdoor, Better.com, Marqeta, Coinbase, Coursera…the list goes on (and SoFi has reportedly considered going public via merger with a SPAC).
A ROYAL STARTUP INVESTMENT: There are a lot of folks you don’t expect to see investing in startups. At one point it was hedge funds, then celebrities, and then TikTok stars. Oh, and now, the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, per my colleague Emma Hinchliffe. The new investor put her dollars behind Clevr Blends, a startup making instant milk lattes that has yet to take any outside funding, as part of her broader push to support gender equality. The company is led by a female CEO, Hannah Mendoza. It won’t be the royal’s last investment, if this story is anything to go by. Read more.
Lucinda Shen
Twitter: @shenlucinda
Email: [email protected]