It looks like a couple hot private companies will stay that way — at least until next year.
SurveyMonkey, a privately held operator of an online survey platform, has raised $800 million in cash and debt from Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Tiger Global Management. If that number sounds large, it’s because it is — that financing is much larger than your typical IPO, which often ranges from $100 million to $200 million.
That money seems to have done wonders for the patience of SurveyMonkey CEO Dave Goldberg, who doesn’t seem like he’s in a hurry to pull off an IPO.
Goldberg told Fortune that being public can be a distraction — a lesson he easily might have picked up via his marriage to Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) COO Sheryl Kara Sandberg. He also mentioned that Wall Street is too focused on quick results, which has hampered the stocks of companies like Groupon (NASDAQ:GRPN) and Zynga (NASDAQ:ZNGA).
However, Goldberg’s not the only IPO-phobe.
Box CEO Aaron Levie also is holding off on an offering until 2014. The cloud-based platform that helps companies collaborate has 140,000, but Levie told Bloomberg that he still wants to build out the infrastructure and bolster the employee base.
That said, a Box IPO probably still would do well if Levie changed his mind. Recent cloud IPOs have been a hit, including Workday (NYSE:WDAY) and ServiceNow (NYSE:NOW), which have clocked respective returns of 84% and 52%.
Tom Taulli runs the InvestorPlace blog IPO Playbook, a site dedicated to the hottest news and rumors about initial public offerings. He is also the author of “How to Create the Next Facebook” and “High-Profit IPO Strategies: Finding Breakout IPOs for Investors and Traders.” Follow him on Twitter at @ttaulli. As of this writing, he did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
A long-time follower of the IPO scene, back in 1999 Tom started one of the first sites in the space called WebIPO. It was a place where investors got research as well as access to deals for the dot-com boom. Tom also wrote the top-selling book, Investing in IPOs. In it, he covers all the aspects of analyzing an IPO, such as reading the prospectus, detecting the risk factors and understanding some of the arcane regulations. But don’t worry — if that process is too intimidating for you, thankfully Tom will do the legwork for you right here in the IPO Playbook blog.
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