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Hello, session card readers.
Last week has been a momentous one for tech companies that went public: DoorDash, Airbnb, and C3.ai all more than doubled when they went public, valuing the combined companies up $ 140 billion on an undiluted base from Monday. The huge pops once again stoked criticism that IPOs were poorly priced and money was left on the table (and while I’m not going to get into it now, there are reads worthy of argument. . some of these reviews are exaggerated).
Now, after seeing those extreme day one pops, unicorns Affirm and Roblox have both reportedly pushed back their sign-up timelines to 2021, per the wall street journal. Roblox in particular is said to be looking for a way to potentially profit from a pop. It didn’t help that the Securities and Exchange Commission was inundated with listing filings. The fintech lender and the games company were previously scheduled to end the busiest December in IPO history.
Either way, even without companies doing anything to tamp down and capitalize on day one pop, the phenomenon can naturally curtail if Black rock CEO Larry Fink’s predictions are absolutely valid. The CEO warned that “there are going to be many accidents” surrounding the recent IPO boil during a fintech conference.
But for now, 2021 promises to be another explosive year for startups that go public. Names that are also planning to go public include Robinhood, Instacart, Nextdoor, Better.com, Marqeta, Coinbase, Coursera… the list goes on (and SoFi has reportedly considered going public via a merger with a SPAC).
A ROYAL STARTUP INVESTMENT: There are a lot of people that you wouldn’t expect to see investing in startups. At one point it was hedge funds, then celebrities, then TikTok stars. Oh, and now the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, by my colleague Emma Hinchliffe. The new investor has invested his dollars in Clevr Blends, a start-up making instant milk lattes that has yet to secure outside funding, as part of its larger effort to support gender equality. The company is run by a female CEO, Hannah Mendoza. It won’t be the royal’s last investment, if this story is anything to tell. Read more.
Lucinda Shen
Twitter: @shenlucinda
E-mail: lucinda.shen@fortune.com
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