Its Grrrrrrreat

Stripe becomes third largest US startup

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What's going on?

If you dont know Stripe the tech company that handles Facebook and Amazons online payments you will now: late last week, it became the third most valuable startup in the US. Go get em, tiger.

What does this mean?

Stripe raised $100 million back in January, but its already hungry for more: it raised another $250 million from venture capital investors last week, giving it a valuation of $35 billion a 55% increase on its last one. Its now only outpaced by government-unfriendly vape-maker Juul and WeWork parent The We Company. Then again, the latters valuation wasnt exactly one public investors agreed with

It remains to be seen if Stripe can avoid the same snub: youll have to wait and see if it has an initial public offering (IPO) of its own (the startups current success is reserved for big-bucks private investors, sorry to say). But have your payment details ready: given Stripes explosive growth, that IPO might not be far away.

Why should I care?

For markets: One in, one out.
While uninterested investors forced WeWork to shelve its IPO last week, theyll soon have their PropTech fix. Homeshare service Airbnb announced itll be checking in to the stock market in 2020. Airbnb could prove popular with the market: it doesnt rely on its own real estate, and tech investors love an asset-light middleman. Seems everyones waking up to the power of community

Zooming out: Aim higher, Cisco.
Investors didnt shy away from all IPOs last week. On Thursday, cloud analytics platform Datadog having previously rejected a $7 billion takeover offer from Cisco IPOd to much fanfare: its shares soared 39%. Thats great for the big investors who bought in just before trading started, but not so great for the company itself, which couldve sold its shares for more cash. Perhaps it should have opted for a newly in-vogue direct listing, where companies join the market without setting a price, pocketing whatever investors think best.

Originally posted as part of the Finimize daily email.

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