SurveyMonkey discloses more details about its IPO, says it's seeking to raise up to $100M and had $121.2M revenue in first half of 2018 on a $27.18M net loss
Jordan Novet / CNBC :
Context & Ripple Effects
SurveyMonkey's path to the public markets has been running since January, when reports said the polling company was preparing to go public after talks with banks accelerated; it had last been valued at $2B in 2014. This filing is the first hard look at its financials: $121.2M of revenue in the first half of 2018 against a $27.18M net loss, with an initial target of raising up to $100M.
The disclosure sets the baseline for everything that followed — the company later set a $9-to-$11 range before ultimately pricing at $12 and opening at $18.75, well above that mark. It also became a template for the wave of enterprise software companies following it onto public exchanges, including Medallia's experience-management IPO the next year, which filed with a similar profile of substantial revenue and substantial losses.
First-order effects
- Investors get their first audited-scale view of SurveyMonkey's economics: roughly $242M annualized revenue run-rate growing while losing about $54M a year, meaning the IPO is priced on growth durability rather than profitability.
- The modest $100M raise target signals a small float relative to the company's prior $2B private valuation, limiting immediate dilution for existing holders.
Second-order effects
- Bankers and underwriters now have a comparable data point for pricing later SaaS filings — Medallia's 2019 filing echoed the same structure of large revenue paired with a large net loss, suggesting the market was accepting unprofitable enterprise software at scale.
- A successful debut above the initial range would pressure other late-stage private software firms to accelerate their own listings rather than keep raising private rounds at flat valuations.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the late-2010s software IPO window normalizes public listings for companies still losing money, shifting the burden of proving unit economics from private investors to public-market shareholders — a structural change in how enterprise software gets financed.
The trend: Enterprise software companies are using IPOs to convert sustained private-market losses into public growth capital, with each filing establishing pricing comparables for the next.