Today TrueCar, a company that was selected as a finalist in the 2008 TechCrunch50 event went public, raising around $70 million and gaining nearly 12% to end its first day as a public company at $10.06 per share.
The company priced its shares at $9 apiece. That final price was steeply under its expected range of $12 to $14 per share. The current IPO market, for most, is somewhat unsettled. The CEO of TrueCar indicated that his company was “launching into fairly choppy markets” in an interview, providing a simple explanation for the share-price discount.
In 2011, TrueCar raised $200 million, at the time hinting at future IPO plans.
TrueCar is the first company to present on TechCrunch’s stage and go public, but there is a special wrinkle to its class of competing startups worth noting. TrueCar didn’t win in 2008. It, and the rest of the flock of new firms lost to Yammer, which went on to sell to Microsoft for $1.2 billion.
Dropbox, FitBit, and Swype all lost that year along with TrueCar.
Even so, while Yammer may have bested it out of the gate, TrueCar’s current market capitalization of $607 million — according to Yahoo Finance — is hardly small change.
TechCrunch50, of course, lasted for two years, growing on what started with the TechCrunch40 confab. After the second TechCrunch50, our little series of conferences was renamed TechCrunch Disrupt, and now takes place globally.
It’s nice to look back and see the firms that we got to know now more than a half decade ago doing so well.
Alright. Who’s next?
Top Image: TrueCar