Tech Startups Prepare To Flood The Public Market

Everybody and their mother filed an S-1 registration document with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, or so it seemed.

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Tech companies Unity, Asana, Snowflake, Sumo Logic and JFrog all filed on Monday, along with telemedicine company Amwell. 

And on Tuesday, Palo Alto-based data-mining unicorn Palantir filed its long-anticipated S-1 with the SEC outlining its plans to go public via a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

Here’s a quick breakdown of some key metrics on the companies. We, of course, will have more as each price and begin trading.

Palantir

• Revenue: $742.6 million in revenue for 2019. Revenue was up 25 percent year over year from the $595.4 million generated in 2018. More recently, the company reported $481.2 million in revenue for the first half of 2020, around 49 percent higher than the first half of last year. Its losses during the first half of this year came out to $164.7 million, down 41 percent from the first half of last year.
• Net losses: $579.6 million in 2019. Net losses stayed about the same from 2018, when it was $580 million.
• Total funding: $2.6 billion, per Crunchbase.
• Largest shareholders: Co-founder Peter Thiel, co-founder and CEO Alex Karp, co-founder Stephen Cohen, SOMPO Holdings and Founders Fund.
• Some notes: Founded in 2003, Palantir is one of Silicon Valley’s oldest and most valuable private startups, if you can still call a 17-year-old company that. The data-mining company has attracted criticism for its practices and work with the government and recently announced that it was moving its high-profile headquarters from Palo Alto to Denver to escape what CEO Karp calls Silicon Valley’s “monoculture.”
• Deeper dive: We take a closer look at Palantir’s plans to go public here.

Asana

• Revenue: $142.6 million for the year ended on Jan. 31, 2020. Revenue was up 86 percent year over year.
• Net losses: $118.6 million for the year ended on Jan. 31, 2020. Net losses increased nearly 133 percent year over year.
• Total funding: At least $413.2 million, per Crunchbase.
• Some notes: Asana was founded by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, and Justin Rosenstein, an early Facebook employee credited with creating the “Like” button. The company is going public through a direct listing rather than a traditional IPO, making it a bit different from the other companies on this list.

Unity

• Revenue: $351.3 million for the six months ended on June 30, 2020. Revenue was up about 39 percent year over year.
• Net losses: $54.1 million for the six months ended on June 30, 2020. Net losses decreased by about 19 percent year over year.
• Total funding: At least $1.3 billion, per Crunchbase.
• Largest shareholders: Sequoia Capital, Silver Lake Partners, JA Technologies ApS
• Some notes: Unity saw its net losses increase by 24 percent to $163 million between the year ended on Dec. 31, 2018, and the year ended on Dec. 31, 2019. Gaming is becoming a hot sector, with companies like Epic Games and Roblox also pulling in lots of cash.

Snowflake

• Revenue: $242 million for the six months ended on July 31, 2020. Revenue was up around 133 percent year over year.
• Net losses: $171 million for the six months ended on July 31, 2020. Net losses decreased by around 3 percent year over year.
• Total funding: $1.4 billion, per Crunchbase.
• Largest shareholders: Altimeter Partners, ICONIQ Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Sutter Hill Capital, Snowflake founding CEO Michael Speiser and current CEO Frank Slootman.
• Some notes: We knew Snowflake would be a big IPO, especially after its $479 million fundraising round back in February. The company, co-founded in 2012 by former longtime Microsoft executive Bob Muglia, didn’t disappoint with its rapidly growing revenue and slowing losses. Snowflake was last valued at $12.4 billion, making it a decacorn as it goes public.

Sumo Logic

• Revenue: $155 million for the year ended on Jan. 31, 2020. Revenue was up around 50 percent year over year.
• Net losses: $92 million for the year ended on Jan. 31, 2020. Net losses increased by nearly 93 percent year over year.
• Total funding: At least $340 million, per Crunchbase.
• Largest shareholders: Greylock Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, Accel, IVP, DFJ
• Some notes: Sumo Logic’s losses are outpacing its revenue growth, as net losses were up nearly 93 percent year over year. That can be attributed to a big jump in general and administrative costs, according to the S-1 filing. General and administrative costs saw the largest increase of the company’s operating expenses, with it increasing by nearly 160 percent year over year.

JFrog

• Revenue: $69.3 million for the six months ended on June 30, 2020. Revenue was up about 50 percent year over year.
• Net losses: $426,000 for the six months ended on June 30, 2020. Net losses decreased by about 79 percent year over year.
• Total funding: At least $226.5 million, per Crunchbase.
• Largest shareholders: Gemini Israel Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, Sapphire Ventures, Insight Partners, Dell Inc.
• Some notes: JFrog is still growing around 50 percent annually  while getting its losses under control. The company counts tech giants like Facebook, Google and Amazon Web Services among its customers.

Also…

Ant Financial (or Ant Group) also filed to go public through exchanges in Hong Kong and Shanghai on Tuesday. It’s looking to be a record-breaking IPO, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias