PagerDuty closes at $38.25, up 59%, on its first day of trading, valuing the company at around $2.8B
When I first met Alex Solomon, Andrew Miklas … Isabelle Kirkwood / BetaKit : Toronto-founded PagerDuty goes public, sees stocks jump in market debut Connie Loizos / TechCrunch : CEO Jennifer Tejada just took PagerDuty public; we talked about the roadshow, the IPO and what comes next Wallace Witkowski / MarketWatch : PagerDuty stock skyrockets nearly 60% on first trading day after IPO Cromwell Schubarth / Silicon Valley Business Journal : Here's who won big after PagerDuty's value doubles in IPO Alex Konrad / Forbes : PagerDuty Hits $1.8 Billion Valuation At IPO—Here's Why It Had Doubters Early On Rosalie Chan / Business Insider : Unicorn startup PagerDuty soared 56% in its first day of public trading — now its CEO and CFO explain what's next Arjun Reddy / Business Insider : PagerDuty, the 3rd unicorn IPO of the year, rockets higher by 50% in its trading debut (PD) Jason D. Rowley / Crunchbase News : PagerDuty Ups Range, Pricing IPO At $24 Per Share Tweets: Paul Graham / @paulg : Congratulations Alex, Andrew, and Baskar on PagerDuty's IPO!When PagerDuty did YC in back in summer 2010, I used to write an email to TechCrunch explaining each startup when it launched. Here's what I wrote about them: http://twitter.com/... Dimitri Dadiomov / @dadiomov : It would seem unlikely that YC's second-ever IPO would be inspired by these pager things, but it's true. But then again, every IPO is unlikely. Congrats PagerDuty! http://www.forbes.com/... http://twitter.com/... Michael Dearing / @mcgd : Founders had confidence in the seed round because their product worked and selling tools that help people raise their game at work is a good idea. http://twitter.com/... Carl Quintanilla / @carlquintanilla : Two well-received IPOs in recent weeks — Levi Strauss and PagerDuty — run by veterans of @ProcterGamble (Chip Burgh worked on Gillette. Jennifer Tejada on Pampers.) One more reason $PG is often called one of the best business schools in the world. $LEVI $PD Laura Mandaro / @lauramandaro : Unicorn enterprise software maker PagerDuty makes its IPO debut today at $PD. It will be a score for Andreessen, CEO Jennifer Tejada and its founders, who each own 7% https://www.forbes.com/... Aaron / @levie : Lessons from PagerDuty on how to build a $3B+ company:✅ Focus on a big, annoying pain that many have✅ Build what others call a “feature” to solve that better than anyone else✅ Methodically evolve that “feature” into a platform that creates a market Aaron / @levie : Congrats to @jenntejada and @pagerduty on their IPO! Another best-of-breed cloud platform proving that focused products, with a big mission, can create massive new markets.
Context & Ripple Effects
PagerDuty's debut caps a fast arc: a January confidential filing off a September valuation north of $1B, an S-1 showing FY2018 revenue of $79.6M up 41% YoY with GE, IBM, and Netflix among 10K+ customers, then a final-week decision to raise the price range to $21-$23. Closing at $38.25 values the company at roughly $2.8B — well above even the raised range's implied $1.69B.
First-order effects
- Early backers and employees hold stock worth nearly triple the September private mark, while underwriters priced roughly 65% below where the market cleared — leaving the first-day gain on the table rather than in the company's treasury.
Second-order effects
- The pop hands Datadog, PagerDuty's closest public-market comp in app performance monitoring, a valuation template it rode to its own 39% first-day jump and $7.8B valuation five months later; every private dev-tools company now prices its eventual offering against this print.
Third-order effects
- With Slack closing up 48.5% on its own debut two months after PagerDuty, 2019's string of steep software first-day gains hardens into an argument that traditional book-built IPOs systematically misprice hot enterprise names — feeding the case for alternative structures like direct listings.
The trend: Strong-revenue enterprise software companies are repricing sharply upward in their public debuts, forcing a reexamination of how IPOs are priced.