[lechiffre10]

I'm currently reading a book called "Financial Shenanigans" and I'd highly recommend it. It's about account shenanigans companies do to make their business seem more profitable than it really is. Not sure if this applies here but interestingly there's a section that discusses IPO's and how investors should be very careful when companies decide to do an IPO through a M&A (Merger and Acquisition) instead of the usual IPO because it circumvents a lot of the SEC scrutiny that they'd normally be subject to in a normal IPO. Found it interesting that SAP acquired Qualtrics a few days before their IPO. Anyways just food for thought.

[mikeyouse]

I think what you're referring to is a reverse merger instead of an IPO -- This is entirely different, just a standard merger transaction. Reverse mergers are when a private company that is trying to go public (often with shaky financials) "merges" with a company that is already public, usually on some OTC board somewhere. This process avoids the scrutiny of the S1 / roadshow / etc and allows a cheap and easy way to 'go public'. Typical mergers involve a lot of due diligence from the acquiring company, they can still go wrong but it's a much different proposition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_takeover

Many of the Chinese 'fraud-cap' companies were taken public in this way: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/business/global/reverse-m...

[devmunchies]

Qualtrics is an exception to the typical unprofitable unicorn. they've been cashflow positive for over a decade.

(I was a growth engineer and an admin for the Stripe instance, Their stripe account had lots of money flowing through and that was just for sub-5k deals.)