Sources: online polling company SurveyMonkey is preparing to go public later this year, as talks with banks accelerate; firm was valued at $2B in 2014
Trump Deserves ‘Fair Share’ of Credit for Apple Moves Cromwell Schubarth / Silicon Valley Business Journal : SurveyMonkey may finally make its Wall Street debut this year Chris O'Brien / VentureBeat : Spotify's risky IPO reveals a valuation crisis, not a Wall Street revolution Duncan Riley / SiliconANGLE : Report: SurveyMonkey in talks for an initial public offering Alex Wilhelm / Crunchbase News : SurveyMonkey Said To Pursue IPO After Nearly Two Decades In Business Tweets: Gillian Tan / @gilliantan : Some three years after raising $$ from crossover investors including T. Rowe Price & Fidelity, SurveyMonkey's IPO is finally on the cards http://www.recode.net/... via @Recode Teddy Schleifer / @teddyschleifer : News: SurveyMonkey is expected to go public later this year, accelerating its conversations with bankers and weighing some last-minute acquisitions. https://www.recode.net/... pic.twitter.com/MNCsKoVCy0 Melody Hahm / @melodyhahm : 19-year-old Survey Monkey to go public this year. http://bit.ly/2mPeMvE
Context & Ripple Effects
SurveyMonkey has been here before on paper: valued at $2B in 2014 and backed by crossover investors including T. Rowe Price & Fidelity roughly three years ago, it spent nearly two decades private while the IPO window stayed shut. The governance reset matters too — Zander Lurie took over as CEO in 2016, replacing Bill Veghte after just six months, giving the company a stable leadership pair to take into a listing.
What changed by early 2018 is the market itself: [[a:931208|Dealogic counted US tech IPOs raising ~$12.2B across 28 deals in the first half of 2018, nearly double the year-earlier volume]]. With bank talks accelerating, SurveyMonkey is moving to catch that window rather than wait out another cycle.
First-order effects
- The banks in the talks are positioned to win underwriting mandates on a deal that forces SurveyMonkey to open its books publicly — filings later showed $121.2M in first-half 2018 revenue against a $27.18M net loss (disclosed ahead of the offering).
Second-order effects
- The float reprices the company against its private mark: shares ultimately priced at $12 — below the $2B 2014 valuation — yet opened at $18.75 and raised $180M, handing crossover holders like T. Rowe Price & Fidelity their exit liquidity.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, long-private enterprise software firms will keep using hot windows to list at valuations set by public buyers rather than private rounds, and post-IPO balance sheets fund consolidation — SurveyMonkey's $80M cash-and-stock purchase of Usabilla within months of listing shows the playbook.
The trend: Enterprise software companies that sat out the unicorn era are timing listings to surging tech IPO volume, with public markets — not private marks — resetting their valuations.