{"id":107198,"date":"2022-11-10T09:30:42","date_gmt":"2022-11-10T17:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/?p=107198"},"modified":"2025-12-11T12:13:55","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T20:13:55","slug":"5-compelling-reasons-you-should-go-ipo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/5-compelling-reasons-you-should-go-ipo\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Compelling Reasons You Should Go IPO"},"content":{"rendered":"

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We took Backblaze public one year ago tomorrow. Our IPO was a great day and the realization of 14 years of hard work by our team. Since then, we\u2019ve executed on our plans, hit our targets, and continued to grow our team and our revenue. And yet, the markets have been tough sledding. For newly-public tech companies like us, as well as many of our peers, stock values have decreased by ~70% from their peak values last year. It\u2019s hard for shareholders, employees, and the market.<\/p>\n

Obviously I wish the last 10 months would have gone differently in the markets, who doesn\u2019t? But when people ask me, (which happens a lot) \u201cDo you still think the IPO was a good idea?\u201d There\u2019s no question in my mind that it was one of the best business decisions we\u2019ve made at Backblaze.<\/p>\n

In fact, the more that I think about our experience of taking the company public, the more I believe that the IPO should be part of every entrepreneur and business leader\u2019s consideration set. A perception has developed that there are magical financial benchmarks that forbid some companies from listing, but we went public at a point in the evolution of our business when a lot of experts told us we couldn\u2019t. We may have faced some headwinds others didn\u2019t, but I\u2019m convinced that the IPO isn\u2019t just for folks with over $300m in revenue who\u2019ve raised hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital.<\/p>\n

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So, in keeping with our commitment to transparency about our business and some of the interesting, tough, and exciting stuff we\u2019ve been through\u2014long-time readers will remember my blog about almost getting acquired<\/a>\u2014I\u2019ve decided to write about our IPO journey: What sucked, what didn\u2019t, what shocked us, and what we learned. Along the way, I\u2019ll share everything I can\u2014metrics, worksheets, planning decks, and more. Not because I think we deserve a pat on the back or to celebrate what we did, but for two bigger purposes:<\/p>\n

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  1. I can remember what it feels like to be an early stage entrepreneur thinking that the only path to making the company you built successful was to seek out restrictive venture funding or seek out an acquisition. I want to offer folks\u2014whether you\u2019re considering starting a business or have already built one with tens of millions in revenue\u2014that there is another path to consider. While doing an IPO isn\u2019t right for everyone, I think considering an IPO, and positioning your business to go that way if the opportunity arises, is sound strategy.<\/li>\n
  2. I believe that democratizing the IPO process will be healthier for businesses, markets, and investors. And I\u2019m not the first: Bill Hambrecht<\/a> is well known for his efforts to open IPOs to broader audiences as he did with companies like Google and Overstock.com. Tech is all about disrupting unnecessary complexity, and going public is more complex than an AWS invoice. In the mid-nineties, there were more than 8,000 publicly traded companies. By this September there were nearly 2,000 fewer companies listed, even after the boom we saw in 2020 and 2021. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s a good thing.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
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    This blog series will be for everyone from those of you dreaming up your first idea, to startups still in stealth mode, to the thousands of companies with revenue in the tens of millions.<\/p>\n

    And if there\u2019s anything I talk about here that\u2019s confusing or that you want to hear more about, please ask in the comments. I\u2019ll try to cover it in a future post.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

    Why Listen to Us?<\/h2>\n

    Hot takes on building startups and raising funding are a dime a dozen\u2014so if you\u2019re skeptical, I get it. What we\u2019ll share here is partially based on the experience we had building two prior technology companies, raising multiple rounds of venture capital, and successfully selling them through acquisition. However, more uniquely: We founded and essentially bootstrapped Backblaze all the way up to our IPO (before 2021 we had only taken $3M in outside funding). Even CNBC noted<\/a> that we took a unique path to market, and yet with $65 million in recurring revenue in 2020, we made a successful public offering and raised over $100M in funding to continue growing our business. We\u2019ve made this journey ourselves, we did it recently, and\u2014in the spirit of transparency\u2014we\u2019re going to share the stories behind it.<\/p>\n

    Why an IPO Should Be in Your Business Consideration Set<\/h2>\n

    Why should IPO<\/a> readiness (the process of setting up your business to go public) and actually going public be in your playbook? I\u2019m going to explore this concept deeply over the course of this series, but I\u2019ll pause here to tell you the five most compelling reasons to be IPO ready, along with a few proof points from our own experience.<\/p>\n