I haven't posted on any S-1s or IPOs lately, but I have been tracking the EMC spinoff, VMWare. Since its IPO about 2 months ago, the stock has been on a beeline toward the sky, trading at $101 today from an offering of around $30. A few colleagues of mine are working at the company and have been rewarded nicely in their stock options, making a lot of instant millionaires. This company's valuation now at almost $39 billion is higher than a lot of well-known tech companies. This is all very Google-esque and seems to have come out of nowhere.
For those of you who don't know, the company specializes in Virtualization which allows a computer to allocate hardware capacity and allow multiple operating systems to operate on one computer. When many computers are connected in this fashion you get a "Virtual" Smart Infastructure that can result in signficant cost savings.
Virtualization is not a new thing as there have been many startups that flamed out because they were too ahead of their time. But VMWare seems to be popularizing it and commoditizing it. As you know, I typically don't buy IPOs and am not an active stock trader, but VMW seems to be blowing up. I'm not sure their earnings will support these types of valuations, but we all know that while being a trailblazer and first mover is not always the best thing in the private markets, it definitely is usually handsomely rewarded in the public markets.
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