Software companies such as Slack, Zoom, and Uber have recently gone public.

When a company goes public, they issue a document called an S-1. Within the S-1, there is a wealth of information about the company, providing a detailed story about the company’s business model, economics, and future prospects. The S-1 describes the operating model and the philosophy of a newly public company.

Going public serves several purposes. Being public allows a company to gain access to the public capital markets. It allows previous investors to have a liquidity event, by selling the shares that they purchased from the company in private markets. Being public also puts some constraints and visibility on a company, which can be useful for a company that is trying to develop internal discipline.

In the software industry, it is useful for most people to understand the dynamics of going public. A technology worker who is earning equity at a private company needs to understand the roadmap to their company going public, or potentially getting acquired. Anyone who invests in public technology stocks is evaluating the different available options for investment, and considering the best software companies to place a bet on.

Tom Tunguz is a venture investor at Redpoint, and the author of a popular blog at tomasztonguz.com. In a recent series of posts, Tom has evaluated the S-1s and compared the growth dynamics between a variety of newer public software companies. Tom joins today’s show to discuss his writing, and offer reflections on what can be learned about company building from the recent series of IPOs and direct listings.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

• New SEDaily app for iOS and for Android. It includes all 1000 of our old episodes, as well as related links, greatest hits, and topics. You can comment on episodes and have discussions with other members of the community. I’ll be commenting on each episode, so if you hear an episode that you have some commentary on, jump onto the app, or on SoftwareDaily.com to share your thoughts. And you can become a paid subscriber for ad free episodes at softwareengineeringdaily.com/subscribe. Altalogy is the company who has been developing much of the software for the newest app, and if you are looking for a company to help you with your mobile and web development, I recommend checking them out.    


• FindCollabs is a place to find collaborators and build projects. FindCollabs is the company I am building, and we are having an online hackathon with $2500 in prizes. If you are working on a project, or you are looking for other programmers to build a project or start a company with, check out FindCollabs. I’ve been interviewing people from some of these projects on the FindCollabs podcast, so if you want to learn more about the community you can hear that podcast.


• Upcoming conferences I’m attending: Datadog Dash July 16th and 17th in NYC, Open Core Summit September 19th and 20th in San Francisco


• We are hiring two interns for software engineering and business development! If you are interested in either position, send an email with your resume to jeff@softwareengineeringdaily.com with “Internship” in the subject line.

The post Software IPOs with Tomasz Tunguz appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.