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Insights and Opinions: Returns From Southern California IPOs

For today's Insights and Opinions section, we have the third and final article on Southern California IPOs and returns from Jon Funk. Funk is a venture capitalist who founded OceanRoad Partners and has been a Managing Director with Allegis Capital, where he invested in Sandpiper Networks, Rent.com and Shopzilla. Jon discusses the returns from Southern California IT IPOs between 1995 and 2009.


Previously, we reviewed the performance of southern California technology IPO's from 1995 through the end of 2000. A total of 52 companies, or an average of about 9 per year, were able to complete public offerings and provide an eventual exit vehicle for pre-IPO shareholders.

At the end of 2000, the "bubble" period of late 1998 to mid-2000 was officially over. There were no IPO's in our category at all in 2001 and 2002 as the public markets languished in the doldrums following the declines of the previous year.

In 2003, financial markets and investor interest had recovered sufficiently to permit a select few companies to sell stock publicly. From 2003 until the crash of the financial markets in late 2007, 15 companies, an average of 3 per year, went public. Markets displayed a healthy rationality, pricing these IPO's at an average of $366 million. By the time liquidity was available, and (More...)


Read the entire article on Southern California IT IPOs.