Last week, our client ServiceTitan successfully debuted on the NASDAQ exchange with one of the largest IPOs of the year, adding to investor optimism that the market’s floodgates are ready to open in 2025.
If you’re a comms leader at a growth-stage tech company (or an agency leader who works with them), you're likely thinking about a potential IPO.
However standard the process may seem, comms decisions have legal consequences. Mistakes could compromise or delay a public offering.
So, how do you stay out of hot water with the SEC? Here’s what we tell comms leaders who want to optimize an IPO:
- Build a great story NOW. An IPO is likely to boost your company into a different stratosphere of reporters. Get aligned on messaging that talks less about what you do and how you do it and more about why it matters. And make sure the story you tell on IPO day is one you’ll stick to for three, six and 12 months out.
- Be prepared to hear “no.” Ultimately, your goals and those of your legal team are likely not aligned. Pick your battles and push back on any measures that feel overly restrictive.
- Educate reporters early. Reporters will cover your company’s IPO whether you pitch them or not, but the first time your execs talk to key reporters should not be on the day of your IPO.
- Lean into the quiet period. When the quiet period begins, the story is out of your hands. If you can swing it with your legal team, arrange a handful of “off-the-record” briefings for execs (or an investor as a proxy) with a few of the most critical reporters during the quiet period.
- Encourage social media paranoia. Ensure employees, contractors and vendors know what they can say about your IPO on social media — which is nothing at all.
All that said, an IPO is not the end-all-be-all.
Treating an IPO as the end of a chapter and not the end of a race puts comms programs in the best possible position to reap the long-term benefits of entering the public market.
Take it from Inkhouse Managing Director Dan O’Mahony, who also supported our client Amplitude’s Direct Listing in 2021 and CAVA’s IPO last year, “An IPO is a moment in time, not the finish line.”
For more valuable recommendations on how to navigate tricky quiet periods and build the best story while mitigating risk, check out Dan’s latest blog.
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