Photo: John Hausner
I knew Lise Buyer when she was a hotshot technology analyst at Credit Suisse (CS) in the late 1990s, during the first Internet bubble. Since quitting Wall Street in 2000 to become a venture capitalist, Buyer has been low-profile--but she's active in the world of startups. She now runs Class V Group, guiding IPO-bound companies. I asked Buyer if she'd share her advice on Postcards. Today, the eve of Groupon's IPO, seems an ideal time to pass on the wisdom of Buyer, Founding Principal of Class V Group, on doing a successful IPO:
Twenty years on the front lines of the finance world--as a Wall Street analyst, an institutional investor, public company board member and Google (GOOG) executive when it went public--led me to understand this about initial public offerings: Management teams frequently make small mistakes that have large, expensive, long-term consequences. Wild swings in the market can't be controlled, but a savvy team can orchestrate a launch that should lead to smooth sailing. Today, at Class V Group, I advise companies that are IPO-bound. Some tips for a successful debut, in any market:
1. Don't go too soon. If next quarter's results aren't reasonably predictable, your company isn't ready. An "open window" is not beneficial if you step through and free-fall four stories. Just ask the folks at Sequans Communications (SQNS), RealD (RLD), NeoPhotonics (NPTN) or TeleNav (TNAV). Those companies, all publicly traded, have missed earnings expectations right out of the gate, and the stocks got clobbered. Hell hath no fury like an investor burned.
2. Get your accounting in top shape. The Supremes sang, "You can't hurry love." But love is a breeze compared to accelerating an audit. Want to be public in 2012? Get your outside accountants going NOW. More IPO plans are delayed by incomplete audits than by any other cause.
3. Don't wear your Sunday best on Tuesday. Too many soon-to-be-public companies strain to publish unsustainably robust margins in their filings. The investors you want are not fools: They buy stocks because of expectations, not current results. If you're pulling out all the P&L stops for deal day, your margins and your stock price can only go one direction. See point 1.
4. Hire bankers, not logos. Assuming you are choosing from a list of well-regarded firms, pick bankers based on the individuals you'll be working with. Ignore the propaganda showcasing a bank's hot deals from yesteryear. I regularly see pitch books from Morgan Stanley (MS) and Credit Suisse highlighting the Google IPO--but most of the actual bankers now work at Goldman Sachs (GS), Citigroup (C), UBS (UBS), and elsewhere—or toil on the golf course.
5. Clean up your act before you take it on the road. Investors care about people as well as numbers. And it's more fun to research the former. If there is available off-topic information about you online, they'll find it. For example, high on a current short-interest list is a company with a CEO prone to posting photos of his hunting exploits. In one of these glamour shots, Big Cheese grins over a deer that, as it turns out, he shot while trespassing. Oops! These days, background checks take a click or two. Want to be public later? Deal with this now. Specifically:
• Review your status updates. Once you are as accomplished as Google's Eric Schmidt or Starbucks (SBUX) CEO Howard Schultz, feel free to use your celebrity to broadcast your political views. Until then, control your prosthelytizing. Why alienate half of your potential investors?
• Clean up your photo links. And uncheck the Facebook photo-tagging option. Now.
• Flatten your public profile. Your age and salary will be in the prospectus, but there are likely troves of freely available information that you may not want to share. Before outsiders know your net worth, run the free privacy scan at Reputation.com. If you don't want everyone to know that your kids, Flopsy and Mopsy, attend Local Elementary--or that you were your fraternity's most successful bookie--hire that firm to keep your secrets secret.
My best advice? Don't get distracted by near-term volatility. Keep the long-term top of mind. And bank on your own good judgment.
Summitt, calling the shots
Besides her 1,071 wins, 18 Final Fours, and eight national championships--the stuff that makes Pat Summitt the winningest coach, male or female, in NCAA basketball history--there is the stuff of her leadership. Measured against anyone else in sports or anywhere, Summitt stands as one of the most formidable and focused leaders you will ever meet.
Last night, after the University of Tennessee Lady Vols coach made the MORE
Patricia Sellers - Aug 24, 2011 3:03 PM ET
Lt. Colonel Gary Brickner
Postcards is about people in transition and folks who do things beyond their job description. Gary Brickner is one of those. In this Guest Post, the third in a series about executives and professionals who serve in the war, Brickner, a New Jersey surgeon and Lt. Colonel in the National Guard, shares his boots-on-the-ground experience treating Taliban detainees in Afghanistan. Brickner didn't have to do MORE
Patricia Sellers - Aug 11, 2011 10:49 AM ET
Most women don't go for it, career-wise, like the guys do. Sukhinder Singh Cassidy breaks that mold. A onetime star at Google (GOOG), where was president of Asia-Pacific and Latin American operations, she has restlessly rotated through the startup world--from Amazon.com (AMZN) to OpenTV to News Corp.'s (NWS) BSkyB to Yodlee, a financial-services company that she co-founded, to Polyvore, a fashion site where she was CEO last year until quitting MORE
Patricia Sellers - Aug 1, 2011 1:17 PM ET
Debbie Brown isn't like every woman, but when you read her Guest Post below, I think you'll agree that she is, in fact, Everywoman. Brown typically spends her days working as an anesthesiologist at Mount Vernon Hospital in northern Virginia. But this summer, she is in full Colonel Deborah Brown mode, a deployed Army Reservist working in the OR of a hospital outside Mosul, Iraq--one of the most dangerous places MORE
Patricia Sellers - Jul 14, 2011 11:43 AM ET
Credit: Cindy Meehl
I recently met Buck Brannaman, the star of the new documentary Buck, at a screening hosted by Tom and Meredith Brokaw. This laconic cowboy cast a spell on the former NBC anchor and his wife, who have a home in Montana and got to know him up there in horse country. Buck cast a spell on me too. He was the inspiration for the best-selling novel "The MORE Patricia Sellers - Jun 17, 2011 3:00 PM ET
Save the Children released its 2011 State of the World report today, ranking the world's best and worst places to be a mother. At the top of the list: Norway, Australia and Iceland. Afghanistan ranks last, while the U.S. comes in at No. 31 among the 43 developed countries ranked. Former Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy, who chairs Save the Children, wrote an essay for the report and offered to share it MORE
Patricia Sellers - May 3, 2011 10:04 AM ET
by Patricia Sellers
On Monday we asked, "Are girls afraid of money?"
America (and beyond) voted and...I don't know what to conclude except I know that the question stirred the pot.
In the heated debate that ensued, I particularly appreciated the viewpoint of Matt in Springfield, VA, who said he wasn't surprised by the results of the experiment in which five $20 bills were placed randomly on classroom desks, and female college students MORE
Patricia Sellers - Apr 22, 2011 3:35 PM ET
The debate rages on about women and money. After I published "Are women afraid of money?"--which stirred up this week's far-flung opinionated commentary--Susan Sobbott, president of American Express OPEN, emailed me her thoughts. Her note was so insightful that I asked her if I could run it as a Guest Post.
Credit: Ed Haas
Sobbott knows entrepreneurs. At American Express (AXP) since 1990, she has headed OPEN, the company's small-business card MORE
Patricia Sellers - Apr 21, 2011 10:49 AM ET
by Patricia Sellers
Monday's Postcard--detailing an experiment in which female undergrads revealed themselves to be practically allergic to $20 bills placed randomly in a classroom--drew a flood of comments and spirited debate about women and money.
Men, for the most part, said women do fear money. "Why the fear?" asked a Miami reader, Michael D. " "IMHO, it is learned behavior. Girls are bought things, boys are given opportunities to own them."
Other MORE
Patricia Sellers - Apr 19, 2011 12:24 PM ET
For the latest on the most influential women in business, philanthropy, government, and the arts, like us on Facebook. 
In a funny and candid interview, Google VP Marissa Mayer explains how she got to the top. Watch
Xerox CEO Ursula Burns shares how she once accepted a job with Dell but ended up staying with Xerox. Watch
Pattie Sellers has written some of Fortune's most talked-about cover stories, including "Oprah's Next Act," "Can Meg Whitman Save California?" "The $100 Billion Woman" (Melinda Gates), "MySpace Cowboys," Martha Stewart ("I cannot be destroyed"), Ted Turner ("Gone with the Wind") and Oprah Winfrey ("Oprah Inc."). Since its launch in 1998, Pattie has helped oversee Fortune's "Most Powerful Women" cover package.
A specialist at dissecting larger-than-life personalities, she has also profiled former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Morgan Stanley chairman John Mack, and countless CEOs.
Pattie co-chairs the annual Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, the preeminent gathering of women leaders in business, philanthropy, government, academia, and the arts. She started at Fortune in 1984, covering the big brand companies.
In Pattie's blog, Postcards, she provides insight into the lives of super-achievers through commentary, career advice, and Guest Posts by CEOs and other leaders.
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Fortune Most Powerful Women
Sheryl Sandberg:
Gina Bianchini
