Extra Crunch Friday: Unicorn rodeo: 6 high-flying startups that are set to go public

Welcome to Extra Crunch Friday

The number of privately-held startups valued above $1 billion that are considering an IPO in the next few quarters is growing.

In today’s edition of The Exchange, Alex Wilhelm corralled six of these unicorns for closer study:

• Airbnb
• Asana
• ThredUp
• Qualtrics
• Palantir
• Ant Financial

He unpacks the rationale behind each company’s prospective debut and pegs their latest valuations before moving on to a second cohort of startups he expects to debut before 2022.

Most of these companies aren’t making that much noise now, but he says they’re the startups he’s “more excited about.”

If he omitted your favorite IPO candidate, please tweet @alex for customer service; your operator is standing by.

Thanks very much for reading Extra Crunch this week — I hope you have a fantastic weekend. I think we’ve all earned one.

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist

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Dear Sophie:

I’m employed at a major Silicon Valley tech company in H-1B status. I want to found a startup. How can I work at the startup?

—Enterprising in Emeryville

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Join Twilio's Jeff Lawson for a live Q&A August 25th at 3:30 ET/12:30 PT

When API-driven startup Twilio went public in 2016, many companies soon realized that usage-based pricing for digital services could be a business model worth considering.

Next week, Jeff Lawson, the company’s CEO and co-founder, joins us for Extra Crunch Live, where we’ll get his advice for late-stage companies hoping to go public and how his life has changed now that he’s at the helm of a $37 billion corporation.

Only Extra Crunch members will be able to participate in the live Q&A, so sign up today.

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Zoom UX teardown: 5 fails and how to fix them

With an assist from user experience expert Peter Ramsey, Steve O’Hear looked at five pain points commonly associated with using Zoom on MacOS.

Whether or not you have UX expertise, it’s worth reading. Apart from the issues they identified, the article shows how challenging it is to create intuitive products — and how willing most users are to jump through hurdles if they feel like they’re getting something of value.

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Why is cloud revenue growth so slow if the digital transformation is accelerating?

A June 2020 Twilio survey found that 68% of corporate leaders are accelerating their companies’ digital transformations “a great deal.”

But if that’s the case, “why aren’t we seeing more revenue acceleration amongst public SaaS companies?” asks Alex Wilhelm.

To better understand why revenue is flagging behind the hype, he interviewed Jamin Ball of seed/early-stage VC firm Redpoint and found several factors to explain the gulf between expectation and reality.

“All the data points in the same direction,” Alex concludes. “So far, the results just don’t match the hype.”

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As founding partner at Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Eric Hippeau’s portfolio companies include Casper, Warby Parker, BuzzFeed and Giphy, which made him a great guest for a recent episode of Extra Crunch Live.

In an hour-long conversation, Hippeau and Managing Editor Jordan Cook discussed the current state of play in D2C, how the pandemic has changed marketing strategy and his guidance for early-stage entrepreneurs:

“As much as you can, in terms of timing and resources, build something. Don’t just talk about building something. Build it. It’s not gonna be perfect, and it might not work the way you might do, but build it because that will give me, as a VC, an indication of what you’re trying to accomplish.”

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Founded in 2012, browser-based design tool Figma raised a seed round and its Series A before it launched a public product.

At TechCrunch Early Stage, co-founder and CEO Dylan Field walked us through some of the many challenges associated with building a company when you can’t say much about it publicly.

Even if you’re not a founder in stealth mode, Field’s reflections on developing company culture, team building and honing a durable marketing plan are worth your time.

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A pandemic and recession won't stop Atlassian's SaaS push

Enterprise reporter Ron Miller and Alex Wilhelm interviewed Atlassian CRO Cameron Deatsch to learn why the company behind Jira and Confluence is experiencing slowing growth.

“At a time when many employees are working from home, Atlassian’s product approach sounds like a recipe for a smash hit,” they wrote, but Deatsch explained that no company is immune to the impacts of COVID-19.

“The customer numbers were off, but the overall financials were pretty strong coming out of [fiscal] Q4 if you looked at it. But also the number of people who are trying our products now because of the free tier is way up. We saw a step change when we launched free,” he said.

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