Seems a bit disingenuous for the creator to scrape public info and then charge for it. Like everyone else has said, can't see what the product is, but to pay 20$ a month for notifications and a "community" that could contain 1 person or 10,000 people seems a bit much.
I think it would be beneficial to reposition to "Help find the best IPO to buy" because saying that this data doesn't exist for free is just not true and makes me a user feel like you are running a get rich quick scheme.
Not to say that there isn't value here. I think people would love to discuss IPO's and making it easier to do research, etc. is definitely a value add. Just think the messaging needs to change.
Also, you mentioned that the 20$ (or 240$ per year) will be made back and from an investment standpoint, that's also not necessarily true. Think it's praying on the misconception people have that IPO will always be profitable so I should pay 20$ to invest right away.
My brokerage (Fidelity) does this for free. But the problem is not knowing about the IPO, it's getting an allocation. As a retail investor, it would seem my position size is not big enough to get any shares. I know this varies by brokerage, so this may or may not be typical of others.
If you could pool together retail investors to increase the possibility of getting shares allocated, that would be something special...
It's not quite the same, but the ETF's; USA - IPO, FPX; and International - IPOS, FPXI, FPXE.
They buy IPO's after they launch, and then sell them after a set duration, automatically managing inflow of new and outflow of old. Youre not able to buy specific companies, youre instead buying into the idea, trends, and behaviors of IPOs as a whole. They also dont capture the huge initial jump in price.
Go with a 60:40 IPO:FPXI to capture all the ipo momentum in the world.
Is the advantage of getting an allocation purely that the said investor buys the said stock at the price that is agreed upon in the price range of the filings with NASDAQ/NYSE ?
Also are these investors usually the HNW individuals who typically invest Millions thru the investment banking firms that are underwriting the said IPO, so win/win for the HNW and the banking firm in the way that it can guarantee the IPO'ing company that it can confidently underwrite and is also using the HNWs money to cover most of the risk ?
Please correct me if I am wrong in understanding this complex process.
A few times I saw news about a company that I liked and, upon Googling, noticed that it had gone public a few weeks prior. By this time, the stock had already shot up. So I set out to fix this problem and built IPOs.fyi.
It's by no means finished but I am proud that I built my first software product and would love feedback. If you are interested, you can use promo code HN20 for 20% off the first month!
In addition to (or instead of) a 20% discount, a referral system might be interesting to you. 'Refer a friend and you each get one month free', or something to that effect.
Paid ads are pretty expensive in everything financial services because churns are low and thus LTVs are so high. So, if you want to grow this, paid ads will be tricky to make work. Never mind that you should stay organic as long as you can.
Serious investors seem to make a habit of knowing other serious investors. Often, in large quantities. There might be something interesting to explore there.
Congrats on the MVP. People who are serious about getting these notifications are likely subscribing to IPOscoop or something similar. Not meant to discourage but feels a bit beta to me. Get eye balls and iterate. There are a lot of problems buried in EDGAR filings that I believe people are willing to pay for.
It looks cool. Still growing as an investor so not going to join just yet..but I’ve shared with a few friends... what software and services did you use to build out the site? If you don’t mind sharing. I like how it goes from sign up to paywall.
This is an interesting concept however I think it is priced too high. I also agree with others that it would be helpful to see what it looks like before signing up. Good luck!
Thank you for sharing this feedback, it's something I was wondering. My thinking for this pricing is that if you just act on one of the signals and are right, you will hopefully have a return of more than a year's worth of subscription costs YMMV
This may come across as pedantic, but the terminology on the page is a bit imprecise and may suggest a lack of sophistication for somebody selling a financial information product. You're not helping anybody avoid missing out on an IPO because you're not helping anybody be part of the IPO market itself. (Generally only big investors with a relationship to the underwriters or friends of the issuer get to be participate in the IPO market, i.e. to buy shares in an IPO.)
You're offering to let people know that shares will be available in the secondary markets the day after the IPO is priced and shares are sold (often buying FROM people who bought in the IPO). The distinction here is important because in an IPO that "pops" on the first day of trading, somebody who buys shares on the secondary market in normal trading is not going to be able to buy them at the IPO price. (They may even have a hard time buying them at the opening price in secondary trading...)
I built the same product back in 1998. It worked well during a heightened time of new IPO listings. Not always the case. but I was able to sell it to a hedge fund back then 2 years later. good luck!
I'd suggest putting the information directly on your site (at least the IPOs coming up in the next X days) and charge for the deeper access + email notifications. But that way people have a reason to visit your site even if they haven't decided to pay yet.
The economics of IPO investing seem to reward the early private investors at the expense of retail investors. In the current market, I question this as an investment strategy.
"Oh no, I missed the IPO" turns into "well, at least I can buy at a discount" 6 months later. This isn't every company, but it's been an increasing portion as of recent years.
Nice idea! I think for people who constantly want to invest in the next big thing, this would come in handy.
As an aside, a good friend of mine warned me that investing at the beginning of an IPO generally is a bad bid. It's better to wait 1-2 years until the hype settles to fairly value a company and that is so true from my own experience with $SNAP, $UBER, $LYFT and $PINS.
If you are interested in following SEC filings of companies, I wrote a RSS-bridge against Edgar which takes in tickers and sends a notification every time that companny files something to the SEC.
This is not supposed to be a "Show HN" post, right? I remember that in the guidelines this tag is meant for something that we can see the inner workings and hack with. This is a mere product promotion post.
I've been curious what the hypothetical outcome would be if you were to invest the same amount of money in every IPO for the past 30 years and sell at a fixed time 10 years later. Are IPOs underpriced, overpriced, or neither on average over the long term? How does the return compare to investing the same amounts into the S&P 500 or similar benchmarks over the past 30 years?
there is an ETF that does this, at 2 years rather than 10. https://www.renaissancecapital.com/IPO-Investing/US-IPO-ETF. Performance ITD has been worse than SPY until very recently when a lot of tech companies (incl IPOs) have had very strong performance... which is obviously why this thread is even happening.
not sure why everyone is trashing this person's service. if you have >250k in your TDA account to gamble on IPOs, think $19 for a notification service on upcoming ones is reasonable. that being said i signed up and when i click on one of the ticker names i get a heroku error, so while the idea is solid just not completely functioning.
[+] [-] wavepruner|5 years ago|reply
IPO calendar for NASDAQ: https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/ipos
Market Watch's IPO calendar: https://www.marketwatch.com/tools/ipo-calendar
Anyone know if CBOE publishes an IPO calendar?
[+] [-] motoxpro|5 years ago|reply
I think it would be beneficial to reposition to "Help find the best IPO to buy" because saying that this data doesn't exist for free is just not true and makes me a user feel like you are running a get rich quick scheme.
Not to say that there isn't value here. I think people would love to discuss IPO's and making it easier to do research, etc. is definitely a value add. Just think the messaging needs to change.
Also, you mentioned that the 20$ (or 240$ per year) will be made back and from an investment standpoint, that's also not necessarily true. Think it's praying on the misconception people have that IPO will always be profitable so I should pay 20$ to invest right away.
[+] [-] charlesdenault|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thrownaway954|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonnycat|5 years ago|reply
If you could pool together retail investors to increase the possibility of getting shares allocated, that would be something special...
[+] [-] basch|5 years ago|reply
They buy IPO's after they launch, and then sell them after a set duration, automatically managing inflow of new and outflow of old. Youre not able to buy specific companies, youre instead buying into the idea, trends, and behaviors of IPOs as a whole. They also dont capture the huge initial jump in price.
Go with a 60:40 IPO:FPXI to capture all the ipo momentum in the world.
[+] [-] bozoUser|5 years ago|reply
Also are these investors usually the HNW individuals who typically invest Millions thru the investment banking firms that are underwriting the said IPO, so win/win for the HNW and the banking firm in the way that it can guarantee the IPO'ing company that it can confidently underwrite and is also using the HNWs money to cover most of the risk ?
Please correct me if I am wrong in understanding this complex process.
[+] [-] jkaykin|5 years ago|reply
It's by no means finished but I am proud that I built my first software product and would love feedback. If you are interested, you can use promo code HN20 for 20% off the first month!
[+] [-] mikekoscinski|5 years ago|reply
Paid ads are pretty expensive in everything financial services because churns are low and thus LTVs are so high. So, if you want to grow this, paid ads will be tricky to make work. Never mind that you should stay organic as long as you can.
Serious investors seem to make a habit of knowing other serious investors. Often, in large quantities. There might be something interesting to explore there.
[+] [-] lefstathiou|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shawnk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jzig|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jkaykin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eat_veggies|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pedant888|5 years ago|reply
You're offering to let people know that shares will be available in the secondary markets the day after the IPO is priced and shares are sold (often buying FROM people who bought in the IPO). The distinction here is important because in an IPO that "pops" on the first day of trading, somebody who buys shares on the secondary market in normal trading is not going to be able to buy them at the IPO price. (They may even have a hard time buying them at the opening price in secondary trading...)
[+] [-] snewsum|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pkhamre|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jkaykin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cvhashim|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] debdut|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wgriffin13|5 years ago|reply
We are trying to democratize finance!
[+] [-] philfreo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JMTQp8lwXL|5 years ago|reply
"Oh no, I missed the IPO" turns into "well, at least I can buy at a discount" 6 months later. This isn't every company, but it's been an increasing portion as of recent years.
[+] [-] vecinu|5 years ago|reply
As an aside, a good friend of mine warned me that investing at the beginning of an IPO generally is a bad bid. It's better to wait 1-2 years until the hype settles to fairly value a company and that is so true from my own experience with $SNAP, $UBER, $LYFT and $PINS.
[+] [-] captn3m0|5 years ago|reply
Code: https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge/pull/1011
If you have a list of tickers, you can generate a OPML feed from here: https://opml.bb8.fun/ (against my rss-bridge server, no uptime guarantees)
[+] [-] haolez|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jameslk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hendzen|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samteeeee|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HOOVERDAM|5 years ago|reply
edit: working now.
[+] [-] jkaykin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swyx|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cvhashim|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pospos|5 years ago|reply