IPOs Are ‘Really Not Worth It’ Says Tim Draper

Tim Draper, a famous American venture capitalist and serial cryptocurrency investor, believes that initial public offerings, or IPOs, are not the best source of funding for industry firms.

The billionaire investor joined the Unitize conference on July 6 to talk about investing in early stage blockchain startups.

Draper’s thoughts on IPOs

During the Unitize panel, Draper highlighted that existing regulations make it difficult for blockchain companies to go public. “I don’t recommend going public to anybody right now unless your company is worth at least $10 billion,” the investor said.

Draper continued that it makes more sense for blockchain entrepreneurs to seek investment from large funds or use some other form of fundraising, like tokenization, for smaller investments. Draper elaborated:

“The regulators made it so expensive to go public that it’s really not worth it [...] The largest investments are coming from those large funds, and that tends to be an easier way to get your money than trying to go public.”

According to Draper, the IPO process used to be much cheaper. Companies used to go public when they were worth “$50 million or above,” and “only $20 million in revenues.” However, today it’s not “even worth it until you have a $5 billion market cap,” the investor declared.

Investing in diversity

At the panel, Draper also supported diversity in terms of funding early stage industry startups. Running an early stage venture capital firm, Draper Associates, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the investor claims that factors like country of origin, history, race, or sex make no matter in choosing what startup to fund.

He said:

“If we keep backing these extraordinary entrepreneurs whoever they are, whatever they may come, we are gonna improve the world. It’s the way I look at it. I say come with whatever history you have, whatever background, whatever religion, whatever race, whatever sex, we are interested.”

“What we look for is big ideas, big markets, where an entrepreneur has a lot of passion for what they do,” the investor noted. By supporting diversity, Draper reiterated a growing diversity trend in the industry. Some experts believe that the crypto industry has begun to feature more diversity than many other tech ecosystems.

Draper is also a serial proponent of major cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (BTC). In February 2020, the billionaire investor said that he holds “a lot” of his portfolio in BTC after quitting public stocks in favor of the cryptocurrency space six months ago. One of the biggest Bitcoin bulls of all time, Draper is confident that Bitcoin will break $250,000 by early 2023.

Unitize is the first-ever online conference organized by BlockShow and San Francisco Blockchain Week. Scheduled to take place from July 6 through July 10, the event features major industry players including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao.