Inside the IPO: Creating a meaningful experience and successful opening day
The hard work during the weeks and months leading up to your IPO all come together the moment your first trade happens on opening day.
It’s a day of celebration, anticipation and more interviews. Making sure the day goes off seamlessly takes deliberation, collaboration and detailed planning from dozens of people in your organization.
We learned a lot during the IPO process, some of which I’m sharing in this four-part blog series to help other organizations know what to expect and how to prepare. Previously, I covered how to prepare for the roadshow and telling your company story effectively to investors. Before that, I talked about how we decided it was time to go public and the effort it took to get ready for our filing.
Now, I’ll share a few insights on how to make the IPO launch day a meaningful one for you, your team members, and the investors and partners who helped you get to this moment.
Be deliberate about who’s present to mark the occasion
Going public usually happens only once in the history of a company, and bringing the right people along to celebrate in person will create a meaningful experience for everyone involved. Take a moment to think deeply about who you want to look around and see that day. There are limits to how many people you can bring, somewhat dependent on the exchange you select, but it’s typically around 50–60. Space constraints for the bell-ringing ceremony and other areas of the stock exchange prevent you from inviting more than that. Your final list should include the key people who helped make the day happen.
Of course, you’ll need the leadership team you toured with for the roadshow, and those who are well-versed in sharing the company story and fielding important financial, technical and operational questions, such as the finance and legal teams. Your communications and marketing leaders should be present to help navigate interviews with the press and cover the event on social media and other channels. The events team should be on hand to make sure every detail is covered from the swag to the toasts.
Beyond those key folks, choose people who you most want to recognize that day. Reflect on who helped you make the company what it is today — the early team members or partners who’ve been there since your days as a nimble startup, the private investors or board members who helped you get started, or the family members who supported from the homefront.
May 17 was that day for us at Pluralsight. With me were some of the earliest Pluralsight team members, private investors and course authors, our leadership team, board members, Pluralsight co-founder Fritz Onion and his family, plus my wife and children. I can’t imagine a better set of people to have celebrated this important moment for our company with — those who believed in our vision and mission from the beginning and were instrumental in getting us to this incredible moment. Having them present made the day feel significant for all of us.
Make team members back home feel included
It’s just as important that team members back at the office feel like they’re a part of the celebration. Hold a party at each office if possible, and live stream as much of the events happening at the stock exchange as you can.
Take a moment to share remarks with those in attendance, so they can take part in the excitement you’re feeling during the bell ringing, the signing of the stock certificate, and the moment your stock goes live. Have members of the stock exchange team narrate the key events taking place, and allow your executives and other team members in New York to speak with everyone back home during downtime.
If you have remote team members or family members who can’t make the celebration in New York, make sure to include them as well, giving them access to the live stream and sending any special swag or treats to them ahead of time.
In addition to the above, we did a few other things to make the celebration. We thought it would be fun to bring a bit of the New York City atmosphere to the teams, so we decorated our Utah, Boston, and Dublin offices with art representing the New York skyline. We also handed out I ❤ PS (our stock ticker) t-shirts during breakfast.
To add meaning to the moment, we gave each employee an individualized and symbolic art piece that our creative director designed. The piece represented our product, mission and values and was customized to include the employee’s name and number on it.
Adding a meaningful gift gives team members a reminder that they were present for one of your company’s most shining moments.
Leading the day as CEO and Co-Founder
Making the occasion special for the many team members, investors and families who put their faith in your company takes some preparation. As CEO, launch day is an incredible opportunity to share your story and vision for the future as the leader who will continue to move the organization forward.
You’ll also work with your leadership team to prepare the many assets you’ll need with you ahead of time. That includes press releases, a founder’s letter and talking points for media, among other documents. We hosted a special dinner the night before the IPO for everyone in New York, and it was important to me to be prepared with notes and remarks for that celebration, as well as the bell ringing ceremony and other moments throughout the day.
On the day of the launch, allow time for press interviews that will begin in earnest after the first trade. You’ll likely speak with press that are familiar with your company and press that cover IPOs and don’t know your business. I recommend allocating a few time slots for any lesser-known press that have covered you since the early days. If you’re not in Silicon Valley or New York, it’s also good to include some of your hometown newspapers and TV news stations.
For your interviews, be prepared to boil down your 30-minute roadshow presentation to 10–15 minutes. For me, that meant turning 14 years of work into 14 minutes. It was challenging, but in the end, proved valuable because we were able to tell folks what we do and why it’s important in a sentence or two. We did 13 press interviews after the first trade, and while I was tired at the end of the day, I’m glad I took advantage of the opportunity to raise our brand awareness.
There’s also an important shift in your perspective that needs to take place before speaking with the press. You’ve been spending so much time talking to investors, but you have to shift your perspective and speak to press as if you’re speaking to a potential customer.
Getting back to business
The extraordinary feeling that permeates your first day as a public company will quickly — and necessarily — give way to business as usual. As a CEO, if you’re not prepared for this reality, you risk feeling let down after such an exhilarating day is over. But you can’t fall into this trap. You need to recognize the IPO is just the next chapter on an exciting new journey for your business. More important, your team members need to be aware of this.
Your teams will no doubt feel energized and excited as a new era begins. They’ll have a lot of questions. They’ll probably feel a bit of uncertainty on how things will change.
In this moment, being deliberate about what comes next will be useful for everyone.
Consider holding a company-wide town hall the next day — or as soon after the IPO launch as possible given travel schedules. A lot of teams choose to spend the weekend in New York to revel in the moment, but we didn’t want to wait that long to be with our broader team. You’ll have plenty of time to decompress and mark the occasion in the days that follow, but you really only have one opportunity to make it meaningful for everyone back home.
That’s why we chose to fly back the day of the IPO, even taking press interviews on the way to the airport, so we could make it back in time for a town hall first thing the next morning. We wanted to share the experience with the team while it was still raw, and give them the opportunity to ask questions about the IPO process.
If you host a similar meeting, make sure all the company leaders who participated in the roadshow are available to talk about what that experience was like, and what they learned along the way that helped pave the way for a successful launch.
If they’ve participated in IPOs for other companies, have your leadership team describe what happens in the days and weeks following to help the future appear a little sharper to team members.
If you have an employee stock-purchase plan or other communications that needed to wait until after the IPO, share important details and answer any remaining questions about it, since it now has a more clear meaning for team members.
End the meeting with an important call-to-action: Moving forward, it’s business as usual.
That’s the approach we took at Pluralsight, because really, for us nothing has changed. We were hyper-focused on our mission to democratize technology skills as a private company, and we are now. We have a vision on where we want to be as a company two years from now, and that hasn’t changed. It’s important now more than ever that our team members understand that.
Your IPO experience will carry the significance of your unique goodness, your milestones and impact on your industry, with the people who devoted their time and energy to make it happen, only now as a company with many more people invested in your success.
Ultimately, taking time to make the day a special one, and then getting back to what you do best, is how to move forward in the days immediately after your company goes public.
Coming next: the last article in the Inside the IPO series where we’ll dig a little deeper into the steps to consider as you get back to business in the days after your company goes public.
