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Future tech exits have a lot to live up to

by Alex Wilhelm

Inflation may or may not prove transitory when it comes to consumer prices, but startup valuations are definitely rising — and noticeably so — in recent quarters.

That’s the obvious takeaway from a recent PitchBook report digging into valuation data from a host of startup funding events in the United States. While the data covers the U.S. startup market, the general trends included are likely global, given that the same venture rush that has pushed record capital into startups in the U.S. is also occurring in markets like India, Latin America, Europe and Africa.

The rapidly appreciating startup price chart is interesting, and we’ll unpack it. But the data also implies a high bar for future IPOs to not only preserve startup equity valuations at their point of exit, but exceed their private-market prices. A changing regulatory environment regarding antitrust could limit large future deals, leaving a host of startups with rich price tags and only one real path to liquidity.

Investors appear to be implicitly betting that the future IPO market will accelerate for a multiyear period at attractive prices.

That situation should be familiar: It’s the unicorn traffic jam that we’ve covered for years, in which the global startup markets create far more startups worth $1 billion and up than the public markets have historically accepted across the transom.

Let’s talk about some big numbers.

Startup valuations: Up, and going upper

To summarize what PitchBook published: Round sizes are going up as valuations go up, (Read more...)

Duolingo’s IPO pricing is great news for edtech startups

by Alex Wilhelm

While the Chinese technology market digests a new regulatory landscape impacting the country’s edtech market in a sharply negative manner, U.S. education technology companies have something to cheer about: Duolingo’s IPO priced very well.

The language-learning unicorn initially targeted an $85 to $95 per share IPO price range. That interval was later raised to $95 to $100 per share. And then, last night, Duolingo priced at $102 per share, just over its raised range.

That’s the sort of IPO pricing run that we tend to see from hot enterprise software companies (SaaS) that investors have favored heavily in recent quarters. But the stock market has also provided nigh-indulgent valuations to consumer-facing tech companies with strong brands, like Airbnb. So, the Duolingo IPO’s pricing strength should not be an utter surprise.

But it is a welcome result for U.S. edtech, regardless. When the company set its first IPO price range, TechCrunch noted that it was on track to earn a new, higher valuation. This led us to the following set of conclusions:

If Duolingo poses a strong debut, consumer edtech startups will be able to add a golden data point to their pitch decks. A strong Duolingo listing could also signal that mission-driven startups can have impressive turns.

And now Duolingo has managed to price above its raised range. Yeehaw, as they say.

In more prosaic terms, Duolingo has set a higher multiple for edtech revenue than we expected it to, implying that the exit value of edtech (Read more...)

Duolingo’s S-1 depicts heady growth, monetization, new focus on English certification

by Natasha Mascarenhas

Duolingo filed to go public yesterday, giving the world a deep look inside its business results and how the pandemic impacted the edtech unicorn’s performance. TechCrunch’s initial read of the company’s filing was generally positive, noting that its growth was impressive and its losses modest; Duolingo recently began making money on an adjusted basis.

While the company’s top-level numbers are impressive, we want to go one level deeper to grow our understanding of the company beyond our EC-1.

Duolingo is likely entering a period in which it will have to invest heavily in features like pronunciation, efficacy and new apps — which could come at a steep upfront cost.

First, we’ll explore the growth of Duolingo’s total user base, how much money it makes per active user, and how effectively the company has managed to convert free users to paid products over time. The numbers will set us up to understand what else can be learned about Duolingo’s business beyond our original deep dive into the company’s finances — specifically underscoring the pressure cooker it finds itself in when looking for new revenue sources.

Starting with Duolingo’s growth in total active users, guess how fast they rose from 2019 to 2020. Hold that number in your head.

The actual numbers are as follows: In 2019, Duolingo closed the year with 27.3 million monthly active users (MAUs); it wrapped 2020 with 36.7 million MAUs. That’s a gain of 34%. If we narrow our gaze to Q1 2021 numbers (Read more...)