Sources: about a month before BigCommerce's successful IPO, Intuit offered to buy the company for $1.5B
Ari Levy / CNBC :
Context & Ripple Effects
BigCommerce's path to market nearly ended differently: weeks after it confidentially filed for an IPO at a potential $1B valuation in June 2020, Intuit came in with a reported $1.5B all-out offer — and the company went public anyway about a month later.
The bid fits Intuit's broader push into small-business commerce tooling around that time: days after the reported offer window, Intuit agreed to acquire inventory-management platform TradeGecko for a reported $80M+, and a year later it paid $12B for Mailchimp — making the rebuffed BigCommerce approach an early data point in a sustained buying spree.
First-order effects
- BigCommerce's board chose the public markets over a quick $1.5B exit, betting the IPO route would clear a higher price than Intuit's offer implied by the confidential-filing valuation.
- Intuit lost its chance at a ready-made online-storefront platform and instead settled for bolt-on deals like TradeGecko to fill gaps in its small-business stack.
Second-order effects
- Intuit's willingness to pay up did not fade after the rejection — the $12B Mailchimp acquisition a year later showed it would escalate dramatically rather than walk away from SMB software targets.
- For other private e-commerce SaaS companies weighing exits, BigCommerce's successful listing became a reference point that going public could beat a strategic buyer's bid.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, strategic acquirers like Intuit end up consolidating the small-business software stack through serial acquisitions whenever their first-choice targets opt for IPOs instead — reshaping the sector into a handful of platform owners plus independent public players.
The trend: Intuit has been methodically assembling a small-business commerce platform through acquisitions, and the rebuffed BigCommerce bid marks one of the earliest and cheapest swings in that campaign.