(Initial Public Offering) The first time a company offers shares of stock to the public. While not a computer term per se, many founders, employees and insiders of computer companies have found this acronym more exciting than any tech term they ever heard.
 | Reproduced with permission from Computer Desktop Encyclopedia. Copyright (c) 1981-2008 The Computer Language Company Inc. All rights reserved. |
Additional Resources
- From the vault: Lisa demo
- From my forthcoming book, Corporations that Changed the World: Apple Inc. After a tour of the Xerox PARC Palo Alto Research Center laboratories in December 1979 and a demonstration of their Alto computer, Steve Jobs decided that the Graphical User Interface GUI was the future of computing. Apple traded...
- Blog posts 2008-10-07
- Click Heels 3 Times and Say 'I want to IPO, I want to IPO'
- Click Heels 3 Times and Say 'I want to IPO, I want to IPO'Get the quote right pleaseDorothy said, "There's no place like home. There's no place like home." It doesn't really go very well with your "I want to IPO" them and she doesn't say she WANTS to go...
- Discussion threads 2008-10-02
- News to know: Cloud wars; Apple; Google; China is watching you
- Here are today's notable headlines. You can get News To Know via email alert and RSS daily: Mary Jo Foley: Amazon launches pre-emptive strike against Microsoft's planned cloud platform. Techmeme A new mystery: What's Microsoft got up its Office Live sleeve? Zack Whittaker:...
- Blog posts 2008-10-02
- Click Heels 3 Times and Say 'I want to IPO, I want to IPO'
- Alas Liquidity Events, I Knew Them Well.... If only wanting a liquidity event and getting it were that easy. As we say back in Texas, "'wantin' and ‘gettin' are two different things". For technology executives looking for a liquidity event for their firm, the...
- Blog posts 2008-10-01
- Virtualization: The race is on to corner the market
- As the technology goes mainstream, competitors such as Microsoft are eager to dislodge VMware from the top of the virtualization tree. Most of the servers installed next year will be virtualized from the outset, experts have said. But, as the technology goes mainstream, will moves by Microsoft...
- News items 2008-09-19
- Wall Street fallout likely to chill innovation
- Usually Silicon Valley floats along inside its own world. You can call it a cocoon or a bubble but its economy is usually separated from the wider world. Obviously, the dotcom dotbomb had a massive effect on Silicon Valley and it took the best part of...
- Blog posts 2008-09-17
- Who Is For Sale This Time?
- It seems the WLAN acquisition rumor mill is hot again after a recent drop in Aruba Network ARUN shares nearly a week ago. Still not trading near its most recent trough of $4.29/share on July 14, according to Google Finance, I am not convinced that the next acquisition announcement will...
- Blog posts 2008-09-16
- Wall Street's meltdown and the potential technology hit
- Folks are waking up Monday to a Wall Street meltdown as Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, Bank of America acquired Merrill Lynch and companies ranging from Washington Mutual to AIG are on the ropes. While the technology industry is removed from this carnage it will still feel considerable ripples--some tech...
- Blog posts 2008-09-15
- SOA adoption down from 2006: if so, why?
- SOA adoption down from 2006: if so, why?The SOA Problem has moved elsewhereMy comments here.http://www.gandalf-lab.com/blog/2008/08/soa-adoption-down-from-2006-are-you.htmlI think the problem SOA tried to solve has moved elsewhere. With WOA ,SaaS and crowd sourcing the notion of a central body managing all enterprise services has diluted and hence you see a lot of...
- Discussion threads 2008-08-27
- News to know: Microsoft's Fiji; Apple; Green IT
- Notable headlines: Mary Jo Foley: Microsoft finally speaks out on 'Fiji' Zack Whittaker: Windows Fiji: a world class failure Gallery: Windows Fiji - Screenshots right Gallery: Windows Fiji - Setup Garett Rogers: Google Translate for iPhone has...
- Blog posts 2008-08-11
- Oops! A Tech IPO!
- Oops ... a tech IPO has taken place. Graham Watson, Lanham Napier, Pat Condon and Dirk Elmendorf of Rackspace were in fact brave enough to launch the initial offering of their company's stock to the public on Friday. Just as Between The...
- Blog posts 2008-08-10
- The Facebook dilemma: Sell or Wait? What would you do?
- The Facebook dilemma: Sell or Wait? What would you do?SellFacebook isn't even worth 4 Billion dollars let alone thinking it will be valued more @ IPO. Facebook is useless. disclosure: myspace userIf Facebook is reporting 4bln to IRS......it's probably a safe bet they're worth far more. Six...
- Discussion threads 2008-08-04
- The Facebook dilemma: Sell or Wait? What would you do?
- Decisions. Decisions. It's the Silicon Valley dilemma. You're working for a company that's wildly popular, growing like crazy, not really bringing in any money but not dealing with financial pressures of Wall Street either. There's probably a fortune to be made in stock options when the company...
- Blog posts 2008-08-04
- Google goes investing
- The news that Google is close to launching its own venture capital fund may raise a lot of hopes, but the history of corporate investment isn't fantastic and comes with a heavy price for portfolio companies that win a corporate sweepstakes. It also tells a lot about Google's own sense...
- Blog posts 2008-07-31
- The future of tech IPOs
- At the AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford University, Frank Quattrone, co-founder of Qatalyst, talks about the dismal condition of the current IPO market, why venture capitalist backed companies are not going public right now, and what the future holds.
- Videos 2008-07-25
- VMWare employees to receive new pricing on underwater stock options
- The last thing any employee wants is stock options that are "under water." But that's exactly what some VMWare employees who were issued options after the August IPO are stuck with. After the IPO, VMWare's stock climbed and climbed - from $57.71 on its first day to about $125 in...
- Blog posts 2008-07-17
- VCs a glum bunch over economy, lack of exits
- Venture capitalists are having a confidence crisis as dwindling exit opportunities and a weak economy conspire to put the kibosh on returns. According to the Silicon Valley Venture Capital Confidence Index the second quarter registered a reading of 3.07 on a 5 point scale, down from the...
- Blog posts 2008-07-09
- Do you need to be a programmer to run a software company?
- Do you need to be a programmer to run a software company?It's back to square oneIn fact, the new Internet-based platforms (Google App Engine, Microsofts upcoming platform to complement SSDS) are creating an entirely new platform. This change is as profound as the change in the early 80's. To succeed...
- Discussion threads 2008-06-25
- Google needs to rethink its customer service strategy
- Google needs to rethink its customer service strategyWow, I'm impressed......that is a very Google-y idea. It reminds me of what they did with their IPO, and basically copies AdSense bidding. Great idea and great post, but I don't think Google would allow this new version of their customer service that...
- Discussion threads 2008-06-19
- Want cash? Buy SaaS
- US software vendors that want to impress their stockholders with enhanced cash inflows should look to acquire SaaS vendors, according to Jérôme Fougerat, regional director of M&A specialist Corum Group, based in Seattle WA and Zurich, Switzerland. That's why SaaS companies have been holding their value better than other software...
- Blog posts 2008-06-10
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