Mark Lennihan/Associated Press
- A new report from The Wall Street Journal found more companies worth $10 billion or more have gone public in the first half of 2019 than any other time since the height of the 2000 tech bubble.
- Already in 2019, six "decacorns," or private venture-backed companies with valuations surpassing $10 billion, have made their public market debuts.
- In 2000, several decacorns also went public, including the infamous online retailer Pets.com, just months before the dot-com bubble infamously burst.
- Here are all the decacorns-gone-public of 2000, and how they compare to this year’s crop.
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Silicon Valley’s bubble may not be ready to burst — but if history is any indication, it may very well have started deflating.
According to a new report in The Wall Street Journal, more private venture-backed companies valued at $10 billion or more, dubbed "decacorns," have gone public in the first half of 2019 than any other time since the height of the great dot-com bubble in 2000.
Companies like Lyft, Uber, Pinterest, Zoom, CrowdStrike, and Chewy have already raised billions in respective IPOs over the last six months. For comparison, 2000 saw more than 75 blockbuster IPOs in the same time period.
Of course, history doesn’t always repeat itself — it doesn’t necessarily follow that just because the great IPO rush of 2000 presaged the end of a bubble, we’ll see a similar trend play out in 2019. Still, it’s hard to avoid a feeling of deja vu: In 2000, we had Pets.com, the ill-fated online pet store; in 2019, we have Chewy.
So we looked back at the decacorns of 2000 to see how today’s tech giants stack up.
In 2000, right before the dot-com bubble popped, pricey startups were going public at eye-popping valuations. Here’s a look at the companies with a $10 billion valuation or higher who went public that year.
Embarcadero Technologies
Getty Images/Przemyslaw Klos/EyeEm
According to a Forbes report, enterprise software company Embarcadero Technologies was one of the few profitable companies to go public in 2000, and raised $42 million in its public debut. Pitchbook data indicates, the company was acquired by Thoma Bravo for $118.17 million in 2007 and taken private. Thoma Bravo sold the company to cloud software company Idera in 2015 for an undisclosed amount.
Pets.com
Andrew Toth/Getty
The online pet store Pets.com is commonly referred to as the poster child for the 2000 tech bubble and subsequent bust. The buzzy company was featured on morning talk shows and took out pricey Super Bowl ads before raising $82 million in its public offering. Just 268 days later, the startup filed for bankruptcy, citing that it had miscalculated shipping costs.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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- Steve Jobs and Jony Ive, once the two most important people at Apple, are no longer there. Here’s how they became the most dominant duo in consumer tech.
Source: Business Insider – mhernbroth@businessinsider.com (Megan Hernbroth)