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Comment by saym | Hacker News Reader

For those of us with limited IPO watching experience, what other companies have gone public with a negative bottom line?

Another question: will the infusion of capital from going public drive them towards profitability? What is there plan to become profitable?

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This goes back nearly a decade, but Salesforce showed three straight years of losses before they went public.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1108524/0001193125030...

Most of them (the tech ones, anyhow). The infusion itself will not drive it towards possibility. The current plans mainly revolve around growing rapidly. As revenues increase and/or growth slows, the company will spend more energy on profits.

> what other companies have gone public with a negative bottom line?

I just casually checked on the Bloomberg and it seems fairly common. Just in the US and just in the past 12 months I see hundreds.

Hundreds of IPOs in the past 12 months?

This is incorrect.

2013 YTD there have been 886 "equity offerings" on US markets, which includes all types. If I narrow it down to Initial Public Offerings there are 233. If I narrow it down further to only Common Stock, there are 186. If I narrow it down further to those with negative net income, there are 83. So I wasn't being very precise originally by narrowing it down to IPO of Common Stock, but there are still a lot with negative income.

Thanks for following up!

Marketo I believe.

TRLA, recently

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