The 11th Hour Dispatch — Friday, June 29, 2018
YOUNG MONEY
You get an IPO! You get an IPO! Everyone gets an IPO! This quarter has been the busiest season of IPOs since 2015. This year, 60 companies went public in the U.S. in Q2 alone totaling $13.1 billion in funds raised. Q1 only saw 44 IPOs but they were in total worth $15.6 billion. Most of the IPOs were small-cap health companies, but the largest was insurance company spin-off AXA Equitable Holdings Inc., which raised $2.7 billion. Around half of the 60 companies were venture-backed. The best performing offerings were Chinese gaming company Huya Inc., application company Zuora Inc., and electronic signature firm DocuSign Inc. DocuSign was the only tech company with positive free cash flow that went public this quarter.
BINGE WATCH
Another one bites the dust. Go90 is the latest service to head to its digital coffin. The platform, which is aimed at young millennials and Gen-Zers, will officially shut down on July 31. The Verizon-owned ad-supported service launched in October 2015, and it first started showing problems when it was forced to shed 155 employees in January 2017. Because of its tiny audience, it had trouble maintaining advertisers on its content. This move was foreshadowed in February of this year when Go90 announced that it would become part of Oath and its CEO said that Go90 “will remain, I don’t know how long for.” As Go90 goes to rest, the show and content rights for its original series will return to their production partners.
BIG BUSINESS
Tinder is now encrypting people’s photos. The announcement came from Tinder’s parent company Match Group in a letter to Oregon Senator Ron Wyden. The encryption changes reportedly went into place in February after an attack that would have let hackers see profile pictures and swipe actions. At the time, Wyden prompted Tinder to encrypt photos in order to protect its users, and they took immediate action but only publicly announced the change today. So, good news for all of you who are unlucky in love and also in hacking attacks.
NOTHIN’ BUT ‘NET
MoviePass has opened a merch store. You gotta get that green somehow.
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