Thursday, July 29, 2010
Insights and Opinions: Where are the Social Media IPOs?
For today's Insights and Opinions piece, we have an article from Michael Terpin of SocialRadius, who asks: Where are all the social media IPOs?.
Yesterday was the start of the AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford, which I've always seen as a midsummer touchpoint for how Silicon Valley's venture economy is doing headed into its annual August snooze (like July in northern Europe and August along the Mediterranean, the last two weeks of August are widely recognized in Silicon Valley as the times everyone on Sand Hill Road mutually agrees to take time off).
Some years there is an excitement about the hot economy, more recently it's been shock and awe over the 2008-09 financial meltdown. But, just as the Valley climbed out of much worse ditches (nothing was worse than the slow-motion, dot-com meltdown of 2000-03, yet out of its ashes came a new bull market for tech and a Google IPO in 2004.
Today, amidst talk of double-dip recession, funds not being able to raise money (which is never true for the top-top-tier; just ask Sequoia Capital), and a return to the dismal days of down rounds, a recent rash of legitimate tech IPOs has taken hold. What's more remarkable is that three of them have been in Los Angeles, the oft-overlooked poor stepchild to San Francisco, Silicon Valley and even San Diego when it comes to California tech hotspots. (More...)
Read the rest of Where are the Social Media IPOs? in our Insights and Opinions section.