IPO “success” is not merely “getting the deal done.” It’s achieving your company's optimal stock trading range during (and after) the IPO. You are directly accountable to stakeholders. (The underwriters move on to the next – you live with the results forever.) To improve your outcome reliably, talk to Michael Kane.

He served as lead banker among managing underwriters and, as a lawyer, served as both company and underwriters’ counsel. More importantly, over the last three decades, he has had many opportunities to learn how to design and sell business equity for the highest obtainable yield. It’s his life’s work.

Start by developing a public capital market branding strategy (a creative, empirically justifiable valuation story) for 6 to 12 months before talking to underwriters.  Then, construct your primo underwriting team based on meritocracy, not entitlement. Investors, CFOs with prior IPO experience, company legal counsel, and your accountants can each contribute pieces. Though largely anecdotal, the sum of their advice will contain nuggets of wisdom. It will still not yield an integrated equity value strategy tuned to capital markets now. They have never been on the front line, repetitively responsible for selling business equity.

To achieve a sustainable, top-of-the-trading range, post-IPO stock price, you need the unfair advantage of Michael Kane’s three decades of trial and error, coupled with disciplined empirical observation. To improve your outcome reliably, Ask Michael Kane.