Several complementary market trends convinced us the time was right to make the move. Businesses want to accelerate the adoption of innovation while keeping a tight rein on costs by adding predictability into their models. Additionally, they are increasingly moving away from expensive proprietary solutions in order to explore open source and the Cloud.
Many of the large legacy incumbent players have not been good at keeping pace with these changes and over recent years, Talend has kept one step ahead of the competition in terms of monitoring and aligning ourselves with this fast-moving marketplace.
That’s the broad-brush picture but the current status of the capital and investment marketplace also makes an IPO more attractive. The late stage private funding market has changed dramatically in the last 12 months.
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A year ago, it was aggressively risk-focused. Fast forward to today and many of the companies that conducted late stage rounds are finding that the valuations they got in the private markets aren’t sustainable and that public market investors are generally unwilling to support them.
So, businesses like ours that do want to list may want to think about doing that sooner rather than take one of those late stage private rounds, which may actually make it harder for them to go public further down the line.
That consideration was a factor in our decision but ultimately we felt we could go public in almost any market because the company had achieved that elusive balance of high, and even exhilarating, growth with being cash positive – so we looked at that and said ‘the time is now’.
And we are certain there are big benefits to being public. One of the greatest gains is enhanced awareness. More people have heard about Talend in the last couple of months than in the ten years prior to that. And that can only help to take us onto the next level.
Going public has been a dream and an aspiration for everyone in our business for a decade now. And we see it as a milestone. The world of big data integration is in a transitionary phase. There is a changing of the guard taking place. Within weeks of the IPO, we were recognised as a ‘Leader’ in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools. It’s a great endorsement of how far we have come.
Yet, it is worth highlighting too that this IPO is not the end of the journey for Talend. Instead it is really another staging point on the way, laying the foundations for the next phase of growth.
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We are not blind to the fact that there will be challenges to overcome. Wall Street will be ‘up and down’ in the near term and share prices will fluctuate but we believe as a public company you always need to have your gaze fixed on the long-term goals rather than being distracted by the bumps in the road.
Since the IPO, I’m inevitably spending more time outside the company and so I really need to rely on our executive team to be as strong and cohesive as possible and continue to build the business without me being as tightly involved.
But I have great confidence in the integrity, the focus and the strength of purpose of the whole Talend team. We are working together to achieve our long-term goals – and our track record and shared vision convinces me we will get there together.
