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Show HN: IPOs.fyi – Missing Out on IPOs Was Frustrating, So I Fixed It
- jkaykin 6y agoA few times I saw news about a company that I liked and, upon Googling, noticed that it had gone public a few weeks prior. By this time, the stock had already shot up. So I set out to fix this problem and built IPOs.fyi. It's by no means finished but I am proud that I built my first software product and would love feedback. If you are interested, you can use promo code HN20 for 20% off the first month!
- shawnk 6y agoIt looks cool. Still growing as an investor so not going to join just yet..but I’ve shared with a few friends... what software and services did you use to build out the site? If you don’t mind sharing. I like how it goes from sign up to paywall.
- jkaykin 6y agoThanks! Built in Python/Flask to scrape IPOs and pull the financial docs from the SEC. A few cron jobs make it all work. I wanted to get this out quickly and didn't want to deal with building auth/payment infra, so I actually used Memberstack for that piece. It's extremely easy to use. Let me know if you have any more questions
- mikekoscinski 6y agoIn addition to (or instead of) a 20% discount, a referral system might be interesting to you. 'Refer a friend and you each get one month free', or something to that effect. Paid ads are pretty expensive in everything financial services because churns are low and thus LTVs are so high. So, if you want to grow this, paid ads will be tricky to make work. Never mind that you should stay organic as long as you can. Serious investors seem to make a habit of knowing other serious investors. Often, in large quantities. There might be something interesting to explore there.
- lefstathiou 6y agoCongrats on the MVP. People who are serious about getting these notifications are likely subscribing to IPOscoop or something similar. Not meant to discourage but feels a bit beta to me. Get eye balls and iterate. There are a lot of problems buried in EDGAR filings that I believe people are willing to pay for.
- jkaykin 6y agoThank you! I definitely agree, this is an MVP for sure. Any feedback you have? Any ideas on a direction I should take it?
- pkhamre 6y agoI would love to get a free preview or 7 free days or something before I decide to pay. Would like to see what the content looks like :)
- debdut 6y agotrue
- jkaykin 6y agoHeard this feedback from a few folks and definitely agree. How do you think I should differentiate the paid vs free option?
- djstein 6y agodon't differentiate, just make it a free trial
- jamestimmins 6y agoHaving a free option sounds like a bad idea. Given that your users are by definition people interested in investing money, they should be perfectly suited to pay. Really what they're paying for is time, since they could find all of this info on their own, but their time is worth more than $20 to do so. Edit: But I do like the idea of a free trial for a week or a month.
- streblo 6y agoAgree about a free trial. I'd consider something like $5/month for email updates, and then upsell into more advanced features that automate a process for me. If this thing could actually help me buy (e.g. hook it up to my Robinhood account and insert an order opening day) then I'd be willing to spend more.
- ViViDboarder 6y agoMaybe a free version could be something that only announces that days IPOs or last week or something? That would demonstrate all the content without providing nearly as much value as it’s not enough time to participate. But an X week trial is probably a good option as well to give people an idea without having to keep up a free and non-free version.
- cvhashim 6y agoThis is an awesome idea, good luck
- jzig 6y agoThis is an interesting concept however I think it is priced too high. I also agree with others that it would be helpful to see what it looks like before signing up. Good luck!
- eat_veggies 6y agoIf this is a product targeted to investors looking to make far more than $19/mo from their investments, then this price is fair, no?
- jzig 6y agoPerhaps but at least for me I wouldn't be investing in every IPO and a large part is just speculation rather than real long term investing. There is no guarantee to making more than $228/year.
- jkaykin 6y agoThank you for sharing this feedback, it's something I was wondering. My thinking for this pricing is that if you just act on one of the signals and are right, you will hopefully have a return of more than a year's worth of subscription costs YMMV
- jzig 6y agoYeah I get it and maybe that's true. I honestly don't have enough experience speculating on IPOs or individual stocks in general - most of my assets are in automatically rebalanced target date funds or index funds. Edit: So for me it is mostly about curiosity and staying informed. Perhaps making occasional bets.
- dataminded 6y agoPlease let your actual numbers drive your decision here. There is always someone who would have bought it for less money but who actually probably is never going to buy it at all. (Not referring to the OP at all) Look at your funnel, test where appropriate and decision from there.
- 6y ago
- wavepruner 6y agoIPO calendar for NYSE: https://www.nyse.com/ipo-center/filings https://www.nyse.com/ipo-center/filings IPO calendar for NASDAQ: https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/ipos https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/ipos Market Watch's IPO calendar: https://www.marketwatch.com/tools/ipo-calendar https://www.marketwatch.com/tools/ipo-calendar Anyone know if CBOE publishes an IPO calendar?
- thrownaway954 6y agothank you!!!
- charlesdenault 6y agoDoes the product literally just scrape this data? Does it include the SPACs/direct listings/reverse mergers that seem to be increasingly popular?
- epa 6y agoAn SPAC is a public company already, so it would not be included here.
- marc__1 6y agoThat is not correct. SPAC must adhere to basically the same road show process, albeit quicker and cheaper than a traditional company [0]. Also, if you go to the Nasdaq website [1] there is a specific section on 'upcoming IPOs' and another called 'fillings', including SPACs. Second, the major brokerage firms have dedicated sections for IPOs and allow 'qualified' customers to join the IPO price. Lastly, you can filter the SEC Edgar database for companies who filed their IPO prospectus (S-1) [2]. [0]https://www.winston.com/images/content/1/4/v2/142711/SPACs-Overview.pdf https://www.winston.com/images/content/1/4/v2/142711/SPACs-O... [1] https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/ipos https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/ipos [2] https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?company=&CIK=&type=s-1&owner=include&count=40&action=getcurrent https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?company=&CIK=&type=...
- jonnycat 6y agoMy brokerage (Fidelity) does this for free. But the problem is not knowing about the IPO, it's getting an allocation. As a retail investor, it would seem my position size is not big enough to get any shares. I know this varies by brokerage, so this may or may not be typical of others. If you could pool together retail investors to increase the possibility of getting shares allocated, that would be something special...
- basch 6y agoIt's not quite the same, but the ETF's; USA - IPO, FPX; and International - IPOS, FPXI, FPXE. They buy IPO's after they launch, and then sell them after a set duration, automatically managing inflow of new and outflow of old. Youre not able to buy specific companies, youre instead buying into the idea, trends, and behaviors of IPOs as a whole. They also dont capture the huge initial jump in price. Go with a 60:40 IPO:FPXI to capture all the ipo momentum in the world.
- nicoburns 6y ago> They also dont capture the huge initial jump in price. I don't understand why this is allowed. Why don't they structure IPOs as an auction, such that the initial sale is at the market price.
- murgindrag 6y agoHalf corruption, but the surface argument is: Companies want stability. If my plan is to raise $2 billion with an IPO, I want to be able to build a business knowing that money is coming in. With an auction, I wouldn't know how much money will come in. It might be $4 billion, or it might be $500 million. The current structure has a financial intermediary who charges a premium to take the risk of a price DROP for me. I can shop around for who will give me the best price, and once I've got that locked in, I know my $2 billion will come in, and I can start building my engineering, marketing, etc. with the stability of a guaranteed check in the bank. That stability is worth more than the premium.
- pedant888 6y agoThis may come across as pedantic, but the terminology on the page is a bit imprecise and may suggest a lack of sophistication for somebody selling a financial information product. You're not helping anybody avoid missing out on an IPO because you're not helping anybody be part of the IPO market itself. (Generally only big investors with a relationship to the underwriters or friends of the issuer get to be participate in the IPO market, i.e. to buy shares in an IPO.) You're offering to let people know that shares will be available in the secondary markets the day after the IPO is priced and shares are sold (often buying FROM people who bought in the IPO). The distinction here is important because in an IPO that "pops" on the first day of trading, somebody who buys shares on the secondary market in normal trading is not going to be able to buy them at the IPO price. (They may even have a hard time buying them at the opening price in secondary trading...)
- jameslk 6y agoI've been curious what the hypothetical outcome would be if you were to invest the same amount of money in every IPO for the past 30 years and sell at a fixed time 10 years later. Are IPOs underpriced, overpriced, or neither on average over the long term? How does the return compare to investing the same amounts into the S&P 500 or similar benchmarks over the past 30 years?
- hendzen 6y agothere is an ETF that does this, at 2 years rather than 10. https://www.renaissancecapital.com/IPO-Investing/US-IPO-ETF https://www.renaissancecapital.com/IPO-Investing/US-IPO-ETF. Performance ITD has been worse than SPY until very recently when a lot of tech companies (incl IPOs) have had very strong performance... which is obviously why this thread is even happening.
- jameslk 6y agoInteresting... although 2 years doesn't seem like a meaningful enough time frame to capture real growth, only hype.
- quickthrower2 6y agoWhich is the strategy no doubt!
- snewsum 6y agoI built the same product back in 1998. It worked well during a heightened time of new IPO listings. Not always the case. but I was able to sell it to a hedge fund back then 2 years later. good luck!
- vecinu 6y agoNice idea! I think for people who constantly want to invest in the next big thing, this would come in handy. As an aside, a good friend of mine warned me that investing at the beginning of an IPO generally is a bad bid. It's better to wait 1-2 years until the hype settles to fairly value a company and that is so true from my own experience with $SNAP, $UBER, $LYFT and $PINS.
- philfreo 6y agoI'd suggest putting the information directly on your site (at least the IPOs coming up in the next X days) and charge for the deeper access + email notifications. But that way people have a reason to visit your site even if they haven't decided to pay yet.
- haolez 6y agoThis is not supposed to be a "Show HN" post, right? I remember that in the guidelines this tag is meant for something that we can see the inner workings and hack with. This is a mere product promotion post.
- pospos 6y agoLooks like a scam. No thanks.
- swyx 6y agoheads up - you need to offer a free way to try your product or it will be delisted from Show HN. trust me it happened to me.
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y agoThe economics of IPO investing seem to reward the early private investors at the expense of retail investors. In the current market, I question this as an investment strategy. "Oh no, I missed the IPO" turns into "well, at least I can buy at a discount" 6 months later. This isn't every company, but it's been an increasing portion as of recent years.
- samteeeee 6y agoI recently made something similar, but for movie directors: https://directoralerts.website/ https://directoralerts.website/
- captn3m0 6y agoIf you are interested in following SEC filings of companies, I wrote a RSS-bridge against Edgar which takes in tickers and sends a notification every time that companny files something to the SEC. Code: https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge/pull/1011 https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge/pull/1011 If you have a list of tickers, you can generate a OPML feed from here: https://opml.bb8.fun/ https://opml.bb8.fun/ (against my rss-bridge server, no uptime guarantees)
- HOOVERDAM 6y agonot sure why everyone is trashing this person's service. if you have >250k in your TDA account to gamble on IPOs, think $19 for a notification service on upcoming ones is reasonable. that being said i signed up and when i click on one of the ticker names i get a heroku error, so while the idea is solid just not completely functioning. edit: working now.
- jkaykin 6y agoSorry about that, was deploying some updates. Should be working now.
- quickthrower2 6y agoYeah try to fix that from happening in future. You need it to swap not shut down when updating. I will check my Heroku too!
- wgriffin13 6y agoDefinitely agree with the mission. I believe it should be free though, so we created Today's IPOs: https://todaysipos.com/ https://todaysipos.com/ We are trying to democratize finance!