Assertion Supported AI assessment confidence: 95% certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Coupa priced its IPO at a unicorn valuation, avoiding a down round

Rob Bernshteyn · 884 SaaS: From Startup to $1b+ IPO, the Coupa Story · Dec 25, 2017 · at 20:00

Coupa CEO Rob Bernshteyn rejects host Nathan Latka's suggestion that Coupa went public at a discount to its final private round.

0:00 / 0:17exact quote · 17.6s
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“No, no, no. That's not our good either. We were somewhere in that same neighborhood. It was just like roughly unicorn kind of thing. And we entered in at the same place and then it went up to I don't know, 1.7 billion or something. And it's, so it's been around that up and down in that category for a while, but not general.”

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 →

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