The investor reception on Twitter Inc's debut was timely as the stock market enters into a seasonall lull, Reuters said in its report. The news agency said public offering activity would be rarely seen sometime Thanksgiving until the first quarter of the succeeding year.
Xoom founder and serial investor Kevin Hartz said, "The question entrepreneurs ask is where can you get inexpensive capital? For years private valuations were higher than public valuations. But over the past couple quarters that disparity has changed." Xoom recently went public in February of this year.
Lightspeed Venture Partners partner Jeremy Liew said Twitter had removed doubt somehow that social media services could not generate reliable revenue to investors via mass audiences.
Liew said, "Once you touch that many people, you will always figure out ways to make money. After you enter the popular consciousness, there'll be some guy on Madison Avenue asking, 'What's our Twitter strategy? What's our Tumblr strategy? What's our Facebook strategy? What's our Snapchat Strategy?'"
Twitter raised USD2.01 billion in its public listing. With a share price of USD41 per share, the microblogging service company's market value would be around USD22 billion, Reuters said. Venture capitalists deduced that other social media-focused companies would most likely speed up their plans for an IPO.
Payments company Square, of which was also established by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, accomodation service Airbnb, and Box were rumored to be following suit. Square and Airbnb refused to comment, while Box had tapped Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and JP Morgan as leading banks for its IPO.
On the other hand, Google Ventures partner Wesley Chan parted a warning to eager tech companies who envisioned to replicate Twitter's IPO success. This, Chan said, was despite a growing investor appetite for companies in the consumer Web industry which have yet to develop their business fundamentals to the fullest.
"You never want to be in a situation where the market rewards you based only on momentum," Chan said.
Evernote chief executive officer Phili Libin noted that companies should have stable revenue streams prior to launching an IPO. Libin declined rumors about the Notetaking service company going public and said it would take them two years at least to get listed.
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