Dear Founder,
Congratulations! If you’re expecting to go public, it means that you’ve built a successful, predictable business—it’s nearly impossible to achieve this.
By this time, you probably have tons of help from bankers, lawyers and your board around preparing for the IPO, doing the roadshow and going public. They’ve done this many times before and are worth listening to.
My advice is simply:
- Practice acting like a public company several quarters in advance. Prepare your quarterly results as though you were filing them with the SEC. Hold mock quarterly earnings calls with the team and your board.
- Obtain dual classes of stock (if you’ve built a strong enough company and have the leverage to do so). In what can be a volatile, short-term oriented public market, preferred stockholders maintain more control over their company’s destiny. For this reason, dual classes are hard to obtain, but if you plan to stay with the business a long time, they are absolutely worth pushing for.
- Celebrate wildly on the day of the IPO. This is a big deal, and everyone in your company should remember this day forever. Include as many of your team as possible in the celebration and ensure everyone gets a memento from the day.
- Get back to work! You’ve made it from the minor leagues to the major leagues, and now the whole world is watching (and has an incredible level of visibility into your business). The challenges you’ll face as you build an enduring company will be unlike anything you’ve faced to date (and probably could fill another book). Please consider us a resource, and keep making us proud.
All the best,
Maynard