The first group of upcoming potential unicorn IPOs is shaping up well

Sure, it’s demo day week over at Y Combinator, but that doesn’t mean we have to only discuss the smallest and youngest startups out there. In fact, a small news item from today reinforces our view that the list of companies we’re earmarking as strong possibles for an IPO when the window for public debuts opens is getting rather long.

It’s even more extensive than we know, given the number of late-stage software startups that have likely reached public-company revenue scale and, provided that the economy holds up this year, are likely growing quickly enough to pursue an IPO if they are willing to settle for a smaller valuation.

But the list is long indeed: Several startups that have said they are eyeing a debut are making the right hires or simply have IPO filings in the wings. Let’s talk about who we have in mind.

The new names

We’ll start with some new entrants to our list of late-stage startups that are gearing up for a public offering:

• Klaviyo: According to media reports, Klaviyo is going public later this year. Or, is likely to do so, provided market conditions don’t get worse. With reported ARR of around $600 million and a last private valuation of around $9.5 billion, the marketing automation company could make a material splash when it goes public. Given that it is a pretty pure-play software company by our understanding, it could help the market figure out how to price former startups that want to list their shares.
• Remote: Guess who just announced that they hired a CFO? Remote did; it announced today. The company sits in an interesting market segment (remote employee support) and most recently raised $300 million against a valuation of more than $3 billion. Now, a CFO doesn’t mean that an IPO is around the corner, but it does mean that Remote is getting its books in order. Given that it could take a while for the IPO window to truly open, we’re content to place Remote into the “first cohort” list, even if a 2023 debut is not likely in the cards.

Remote makes for a good segue to a group of companies we’ve been writing about quite a bit lately: