It’s IPO Season: Fun facts you need to know
Last week, 7 private US companies collectively worth $44B filed to go public. And that doesn’t even include China’s Ant Group, a $250B+ fintech giant which is likely to set an IPO record.
Here are some notable startups from the pack, including two (Asana, Palantir) that will go public via a direct listing.
- Founded: 2008
- What they do: Asana is a productivity and collaboration tool that powers 75k companies (including The Hustle).
- 2019 revenue: $143m (net loss of $119m)
- Fun fact: Asana was founded by Mark Zuckerberg’s college roommate (and Facebook co-founder), Dustin Moskovitz. It started as a task management tool within Facebook.
- Founded: 2003
- What they do: Palantir is an analytics firm that primarily provides big data analytics software to government agencies.
- 2019 revenue: $743m (net loss of $580m)
- Fun Fact: Palantir is named after the “seeing stones” from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series. These stones, which allow the possessor to see the past and future, are meant to be a cautionary tale for Palantir’s real-life technology.
- Founded: 2004
- What they do: Unity Software provides a gaming engine for game makers. It powers >50% of the iPhone’s top 1k mobile games.
- 2019 revenue: $542m (net loss of $163m)
- Fun Fact: In 2015, Mark Zuckerberg wrote a memo outlining his case to buy Unity. He viewed Google and Apple’s dominance of mobile as an ongoing threat and wanted Facebook to take a lead on VR.
