Assertion Partly supported AI assessment confidence: 85% certainty 4/5 debate potential 1/5

Bender: Historical tech IPO transaction lower bound was $35M to $40M

Morgan Bender · a16z Podcast | The Rise of the Quasi-IPO · Jan 2, 2019 · at 12:26

Morgan Bender of Andreessen Horowitz explains the threshold used in an a16z analysis comparing historical tech IPO transaction sizes to modern late-stage private growth rounds.

0:00 / 0:07exact quote · 7.4s

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“The lower bound of what come, what technology companies have IPO'd at with regarding to transaction size is roughly, you know, 35 to forty million dollars.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

Historically, tech company initial public offerings had a lower bound transaction size of roughly $35 million to $40 million.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

Morgan Bender's claim accurately captures the longstanding institutional venture capital and investment banking rule of thumb, but is not an absolute lower bound in historical empirical datasets. In institutional venture capital and investment banking circles (particularly in the post-Sarbanes-Oxley era), roughly $35 million to $40 million (or $30 million to $50 million) was widely considered the practical minimum transaction size necessary to absorb fixed legal/underwriting costs, ensure tier-1 institutional research coverage, and provide aftermarket liquidity on major exchanges. However, across comprehensive historical SEC filings and academic datasets (such as Prof. Jay Ritter's IPO database), tech companies in earlier decades (the 1980s and 1990s) and those listing on smaller-cap tiers routinely completed IPOs raising gross proceeds between $10 million and $30 million.

Academic datasets compiled by Prof. Jay Ritter demonstrate that in the 1980s and 1990s, nominal gross proceeds for tech IPOs frequently ranged between $10 million and $30 million.
SEC Form S-1 filings confirm numerous small-cap and micro-cap tech companies completed public offerings below $35 million prior to 2015.
Institutional investment banking and VC norms historically treated $35M–$40M as the practical threshold for a viable traditional institutional tech IPO on major US exchanges.

Checked against

[1] a16z.com [2] a16z.com [3] wordpress.com [4] ufl.edu [5] ufl.edu [6] thecorporatecounsel.net [7] otcmarkets.com [8] sec.gov

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assessed as of 2026-08-27

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Mentioned

35 to forty million dollars technology companies

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Bender: Historical tech IPO transaction lower bound was $35M to $40M

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