The big money in tech seems to be regaining its confidence.
After a month-long IPO drought, four companies, including three tech companies, set IPO terms in recent days. "The US IPO market suddenly awoke this week," reads a report from Renaissance Capital. The Greenwich, Connecticut IPO advisory firm says that, if the history of similar "IPO icebreakers" is any guide, returns should be "uniformly excellent."
Peter Thiel also seems to be banking on a rejuvenated IPO market. Facebook's original angel investor launched a $402 million late-stage fund that TechCrunch said will "invest across the entire technologyindustry," supplementing Thiel's early-stage Founders Fund and battered public markets fund Clarium Capital. The new fund, Mithril, isn't a pure bet on the IPO market, since it will make money when investments are acquired or, hypothetically, by cashing out to other private investors. But its returns will undoubtedly have some correlation with the broader strength of the market for tech IPOs.
“We’re very willing to be patient with a growth cycle that might take years to become apparent... there might be peaks, valleys, twists and turns in the short run," a fund director told TechCrunch's Kim Mai Cutler. In the meantime, quite a few investors and founders will be wondering exactly when they growth cycle might reveal itself — and how extreme the intervening "peaks and valleys" will be.
