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Comment by lemming | Hacker News Reader

I don't usually follow these things, but wouldn't it be unusual for a company to go public before actually releasing a product?

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They started production about 2 weeks ago and have made a few deliveries to early employees.

As a reservation holder myself I don't really consider "delivering" to employees to be releasing a product. Employees aren't free to discuss flaws or other problems and no doubt get priority for fixes/repairs.

I'm certain they will make deliveries to non-insider customers before the IPO. They're clearly close to that and it would be a really bad look if they didn't.

Yeah, I agree. I'm just a bit disappointed that they said deliveries would start in September and then only delivered a tiny number to employees.

I saw my first Rivian in the wild last Sunday. I live near their head office in Plymouth, MI so I presume it was an employee.

Looked sort of toy-like, not like a typical truck.

Yes, and also Rivian has production pickup truck and Amazon delivery vans....

There's certainly the appetite for it in the market, valuations are very high, so it's a smart way to get a liquidity event and raise further funds. In the recent past, companies have gone public with a lot less. The product and orders are real, not just empty promises and 3d animations.

It seems this is becoming the norm these days. Astra, Joby Aviation, Lucid Motors, Archer and a few others in the aerospace/automotive industries have done this recently.

How long does it take to go public? They're asking to go ASAP but is that days, weeks, months from now?

They're shipping the founders edition preorders in November.

As long as the SEC doesn't request more information, and they've had this filing in a confidential manner for awhile now, they could start trading Monday. But, it's more likely to be announced to build the media buzz. That said, they want to capitalize on the highly positive press they got out of the journalist drives a few days ago - I've read/watched most of them and I feel like literally half of them ordered a vehicle themselves, so sooner is better while that buzz exists.

> I've read/watched most of them and I feel like literally half of them ordered a vehicle themselves, so sooner is better while that buzz exists.

Yeah, most of them are like "I've never been off-road in my life but this truck seems legit. Here's a photo of me in the trunk."

I'm still excited and wish them much success.

It does seem a bit odd to me too, but FWIW this is actually fairly common for biotech and pharma startups and has been for a long time.

And although they haven't sold any consumer cars yet my understanding is they're currently delivering vans to Amazon as we speak.

Moderna went public before it had any product available.

EDIT: I'm not saying that Rivian would be as good a purchase as Moderna but... yeah. This sort of thing has become way more common in recent years. This is definitely the high-risk / high-reward area of investing: buying companies that you don't even know work or not yet (Moderna IPO'd in 2018, long before COVID19 even existed. There was pretty much no way to know it'd be the miracle drug to a non-existent disease just two years later)

On the other hand: Moderna's success shows why the stock market is a magical thing. The money pumped into Moderna through the IPO allowed it get the money needed to build up its research facilities, in effect preparing for COVID19 even before the disease appeared.

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"Going public" means one thing and one thing only: the company wants money, and they think bonds (aka: borrowing money from a bank) is a bad value. Its still up to the investor to decide if giving money to the company is a worthwhile trade.

Also a sign that things might be overheating

I mean, that's sorta the point of the market.

If there's lots of jubilance, companies can extract money from shares better than from bonds.

That's why the investor needs a sharp and savvy mind. I think Rivian is a good company btw, but the rumored IPO prices are insane. You need to be both a good company and at a good price to be worthy of buying.

Only if its a real company intending to manufacture said product.

Pretty sure their first vehicle deliveries are eminent if they haven’t already happened.

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