After stepping away to focus on her health, Joan Barnes was so disconnected from Gymboree that she was unaware of its IPO. She found out by overhearing a conversation at a restaurant and then confirming it by finding the ad in a newspaper.
Related Insights
When a crucial deal with Hasbro collapsed, a spent Joan Barnes went to her cabin to recover. She told her team she was too drained to lead and empowered them to come up with the "winning strategy" without her, leading to the pivotal retail idea.
Before the internet, Greylock partners identified emerging companies by scanning classified ads in newspapers from various cities. Job postings signaled a hiring company, prompting partners to fly out and meet the founders in person, a process that could take months.
Klarna's CEO candidly revealed that his management team vowed never to watch the company's stock price after its IPO, but they immediately broke that promise and checked it daily. This highlights the intense, almost unavoidable psychological pressure that public market fluctuations exert on company leadership.
After the successful retail pivot, Joan Barnes recognized her strengths were in vision and creation, not in scaling operations. She understood the company needed a different type of leader for the next phase and was willing to step aside.
Joan Barnes leveraged local press for a feature story *before* opening her first location. This created immediate demand and ensured the program was oversubscribed from the start, demonstrating the power of pre-launch PR.
Netscope's CEO revealed their IPO was a strategic move for market awareness and credibility, not a necessity for fundraising. As a private company competing against public giants, the IPO provided the visibility needed to get into deals and win proof-of-concept trials, highlighting the IPO's role as a powerful marketing tool.
Founder Jacqueline Johnson describes her $22M company sale as surreal and isolating. The deal closed on Zoom, and she immediately jumped into another work meeting, highlighting how major career milestones can feel disconnected from reality in a remote world.
The process of going public establishes a clear market price for a company, an act of 'price discovery.' This transparency, combined with the discipline of quarterly reporting, can make a company a more attractive and straightforward acquisition target, as seen with Slack.
Owning nearly 100% of his cash-flow-positive company, Tomas Peterffy took Interactive Brokers public purely for advertising purposes. He viewed the IPO as a way to get "the company's name in the public domain" and even used a Dutch auction to save $80 million on banking fees.
When Joan Barnes pitched her retail pivot, a board member and retail veteran advised against it, citing the team's inexperience. However, the lead investor overruled him, providing the bridge loan that funded the successful test stores.