{"id":4681,"date":"2017-04-12T14:47:49","date_gmt":"2017-04-12T14:47:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/qualtrics-waits-on-that-ipo-raises-180-million-at-a-2-5-billion-valuation-instead.html"},"modified":"2017-04-12T14:47:49","modified_gmt":"2017-04-12T14:47:49","slug":"qualtrics-waits-on-that-ipo-raises-180-million-at-a-2-5-billion-valuation-instead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/qualtrics-waits-on-that-ipo-raises-180-million-at-a-2-5-billion-valuation-instead.html","title":{"rendered":"Qualtrics waits on that IPO, raises $180 million at a $2.5 billion valuation instead"},"content":{"rendered":"


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That Qualtrics IPO many<\/a> have been\u00a0expecting<\/a> is on hold for now. The online market research platform has just raised its third round for $180 million at a whopping $2.5 billion valuation.<\/p>\n

The Provo, Utah-based company came from much humbler beginnings, bootstrapping the operation for a decade before finally taking financing from Sequoia and Accel in 2012. It has blown up since then, hitting unicorn valuation status two years later, with $150 million in annual revenue. The company now tells me it\u2019s hitting somewhere north of $250 million in revenue this year.<\/p>\n

One the outside, the company looks pretty healthy. Smith tells me Qualtrics is profitable \u2014 something not many tech companies, even\u00a0some that have gone public recently, can say. Many, including myself<\/a>, have speculated, based on those financials and a few other indicators, the company may have been making plans to go public in 2017.\u00a0While that could still be in the cards, it\u2019s also not unheard of for a company to raise one final round before diving into the public market. Mulesoft picked up another $128 million ten months prior to filing in March, for example.<\/p>\n

And Smith has said he plans on going public. It looks like he\u2019s feverishly working towards that goal. Five months ago the startup hired Microsoft veteran Zig Serafin as its COO and just added Atlassian\u2019s CFO Murray Demo, who helped guide that company through its initial $4.4 billion public offering, to the board. Companies often pull in key leadership just before going public and Qualtrics founder Ryan Smith told TechCrunch in a recent interview<\/a> he was \u201cgetting his house in order\u201d in preparation for an IPO event.<\/p>\n

Couple that with a market that has been referred to as a \u201cperfect storm\u201d for filing and it might seem a head-scratcher why Qualtrics would take another round, diluting its equity instead of going public.<\/p>\n

But an IPO might have been on the table before Smith decided to go for one more round. Insight Venture\u2019s Jeff Lieberman told TechCrunch he\u2019d discussed with Qualtrics \u201call different options.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c[Qualtrics] clearly has the right financial profile. It\u2019s really about positioning. [Smith] doesn\u2019t just want to be a public company. He wants to be an excellent, market-dominating company,\u201d Lieberman said.<\/p>\n

But all may not be as it seems, according to Kathleen Smith, a principal at Renaissance Capital who\u2019s been analyzing IPO\u2019s for the past 20 years. \u201cIf you are taking rounds of financing and they\u2019re done at high valuations you may be hesitant to go because you may have to do an IPO down round,\u201d she says. \u201cIf you do a round at $2.5 billion, you\u2019re not going to want to raise money publicly below that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Silicon Valley, she says, has shifted to higher valuations and the public market has become more valuation sensitive over the last few years. That\u2019s one reason she thinks some of the tech companies have been slower to move forward than expected.<\/p>\n

Smith, the IPO analyst, also cautions the company may not be meeting profit expectations, even with revenues in the hundreds of millions. But that\u2019s nonsense to Qualtrics\u2019s Smith, who counters he\u2019s not public yet because he doesn\u2019t have to be. \u201cWe raised the money because we can,\u201d he said, pointing out other enterprise unicorns have done the same thing before going public.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn IPO isn\u2019t an exit. It should be the beginning and we wouldn\u2019t be going out if we didn\u2019t think that more wealth could be created post-IPO,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n

He also told me he wants to reach revenue in the billions before an IPO event. Side note \u2014 it took the company a bootstrapped 10 years to reach $50 million in revenue in 2012 and another five years to get to more than $250 million so we might be waiting a few more years for Qualtrics to hit that goal.<\/p>\n

*Qualtrics wanted to clarify Smith meant it is hard to be a billion-dollar revenue company without going public.<\/i><\/p>\n

But let\u2019s set aside IPO speculation for now and talk about this latest round of funding. Previous investors Sequoia, Accel and Insight Venture Partners\u00a0came back again to put in for growth financing.\u00a0In addition to putting cash on the balance sheet, the round also allows Smith to provide some liquidity for early employees and hire more in the C-suite, including a chief financial officer in the near future.<\/p>\n

Qualtrics has also just launched what it calls the XM Platform, an experience management platform Smith believes will one day be as ubiquitous as Workday or Salesforce software in every office, but for managing internal feedback and helping organizations uncover key business drivers, predict future customer needs, and retain employees.<\/p>\n

\u201cQualtrics is a one-of-a-kind company that has executed incredibly well,\u201d Sequoia Capital partner Bryan Schreier said in a statement. \u201cThey have delivered outstanding, accelerating growth at nine-digit revenue numbers all while staying cash flow positive. That is practically unheard of. It\u2019s an incredible sign of confidence in Qualtrics\u2019\u00a0continued growth trajectory and the huge market for its new XM Platform that all of its investors have come back to buy as many shares as they could at this new valuation.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunchIt\/~3\/JTQTIYcKk60\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That Qualtrics IPO many have been\u00a0expecting is on hold for now. The online market research platform has just raised its third round for $180 million at a whopping $2.5 billion <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-4681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enterprise-software","tag-enterprise"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t