Going Public: How Silicon Valley Rebels Loosened Wall Street’s Grip on the IPO and Sparked a Revolution

Campbell, Business Insider’s chief financial correspondent, delivers a thorough if dry history of the initial public offering and its evolution as tech companies became a bigger chunk of the market. He begins with technology companies’ IPOs during the ’60s and goes on to profile such luminaries as Bill Hambrecht of Francis I. DuPont & Co., an investment banker who popularized the OpenIPO model in the late ‘90s, which allowed the public to purchase shares “more equitably.” Campbell discusses how the market changed when Spotify listed shares directly on the exchange in 2018, which “fashion[ed] a new role for investment banks that kept them at arm’s length,” and Slack later modeled its listing after Spotify’s. Things culminate at the end of 2020 with DoorDash’s IPO, which closed 85% higher than the IPO price, and the SEC’s approval of the NYSE’s proposal to allow companies to raise money with direct listings, paying fewer fees to investment banks. Campbell’s heavy on the details, and he meanders from company to company with little in the way of narrative or drama. Readers who aren’t already in the finance world can safely take a pass on this one. (July)