By the end of April Squarepspace had registered approximately 40 million shares for its direct listing in New York. It is another win for advocates of the increasingly famous alternative to the IPO (initial public offering).
The company was founded in 2003 Anthony Casalena in his dorm room at the University of Maryland. It is a website building and hosting firm was valued at nearly $10 billion in March when it raised $300 million from investors involving Tiger Global, Fidelity Management and Research Company, and D1 Capital Partners.
The firm joins a bunch of technology startups, involving Roblox and Coinbase, in choosing to go public via a direct listing this year.
In a direct listing, no shares are sold in advance as opposed to an IPO. The price at debut is determined by orders coming into the stock exchange.
Advocates of the process argue it is a better way to value new shares after the massive first offerings of firms such as Airbnb and DoorDash raised concerns leaving money on the table in their initial public offerings.
In March, it was seen that grocery delivery application Instacart, which was valued at $39 billion during its last funding series. It is also expected to go public via a direct listing. In addition, Ziprecruiter has also filed its shares via the same way.
On May 19, the shares of the company will start trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “SQSP”. The firm competes with Wix.com Ltd, and GoDaddy, had confidentially filed for a stock market listing in January.
