Betting on the Future: Commentary on IPO Predictions for 2024

In one of the most recent episodes of 20VC, we learned about a wager between Jason Lemkin and Harry Stebbings. Jason bet Harry that there will be an IPO every week in the latter half of 2024 — that's 26 IPOs in half a year, or 13 each quarter. Let’s pause for a moment to think about the scale of the claim he is making. If this was 2021, this prediction wouldn’t have made headlines. But in 2023, the number of IPOs has plunged. To recover to the rate which Jason thinks it will, we’d have to see a 225% increase in IPOs from where we currently are. Quick note: for simplicity, all metrics in this post only include billion-dollar public exits, which was my interpretation of the bet. Thanks for reading Jamesin’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribed But at the heart of this matter, it isn’t just important to notice the decline, but also to understand the causes. Does 11x fewer IPOs in the first half of 2023 compared to 2021 signify 11x less innovati

In one of the most recent episodes of 20VC, we learned about a wager between Jason Lemkin and Harry Stebbings. Jason bet Harry that there will be an IPO every week in the latter half of 2024 — that's 26 IPOs in half a year, or 13 each quarter. Let’s pause for a moment to think about the scale of the claim he is making. If this was 2021, this prediction wouldn’t have made headlines. But in 2023, the number of IPOs has plunged. To recover to the rate which Jason thinks it will, we’d have to see a 225% increase in IPOs from where we currently are. Quick note: for simplicity, all metrics in this p