The IPO Market Reopens & How To Leverage This For Your Banking Applications!

Hello and welcome back to The Deal Room, and we've got quite the show for you today because we're going to talk about the IPO market. We've had Arm, Instacart, Klaviyo, and Birkenstock. Uh, the latter I thought probably hit its peak when I was at university back in the early noughties, but apparently not. They're looking to IPO, uh, at this present point in time. So a couple things just to give you a bit of a preview of what Steven and I are going to discuss in this episode. We've got, is the IPO market opening back up? That kind of was the lead of a number of mainstream finance publications of this week following those ones I've just mentioned. But how is this different to that boom that we saw in the IPO market back in 2021? Importantly, hopefully I'm going to be able to extract that, Steven. What is the difference between what was happening then and what is happening now? And a few precautionary tales about this kind of first-day pop, because we have seen some pretty extreme price reactions on Arm and Instacart, um, just in the last 2 weeks. And then stay tuned because at the end, we've been talking to a lot of students, and all of the applications are, are pretty much fully open now, particularly in the banking space. And one of those common questions that we get always is how do you kind of talk about a current deal that is happening? And I see lots of people sharing information about there's this deal, there's that deal. But what I'm going to get Stephen to do, hopefully, or get out of him, is not only talk about the deals in a bit more detail, but talk about the role of what investment banks play. And then importantly, what does that actual— what are all the different players between the lead underwriters, the advisors. And I know that there's many levels to that because I think if you know that, I think you can really stand out in the interview process. I think your odds go up substantially. And so hopefully if you stick around to the end, Stephen will share his thoughts on how to tackle that inevitable question. But Stephen, the hoodie is on. I assume winter is here.

Winter's very much here. I'm actually still kind of coming down from our summer party on Friday where I got into our office and it was full of Amplify polo shirts and t-shirts and hoodies. So I just grabbed whatever I could. So my winter fashion is Birkenstocks and an Amplify hoodie. I know this isn't a fashion podcast, but—

All right. So where do you want to start then? There's been so many, it seems. I know you wrote on LinkedIn earlier this week. It's like waiting for London buses. You wait forever and then they all come at once. So which one do you want to start with?

Oh gosh, it's a good question. Well, let's go sequentially from Arm, which priced and launched last week, all the way through to Birkenstock, which is looking to launch in October. And we can kind of take them one by one because they all have slightly different flavors. And then maybe we'll try and tie them together with a bit of a 2021 retrospective. So I think it's always good. We're talking a lot about IPOs on this podcast, and my background's M&A, so we dealt with the equity capital markets team quite a lot. But this is certainly something that is interesting to me, but it's not my background. So it's very fascinating for me to get deeper into these stories. Well, let's just take a look at Arm. We spent a whole podcast last week talking about the IPO, and it priced Last week, last Thursday, the 14th of September at $51 a share. And we try not to give investment advice on this podcast, but we were nudging one way or the other last week on the podcast saying, here are the arguments for— I think maybe I was trying to sell you the IPO at certain times.

Cornerstone investor on the pod. Here we go.

If you got in at $51 and got out at its peak, on Friday of last week, you would've bagged a $15 per share increase. So it popped from $51 a share to $66 midway through last Friday. And that's a pretty healthy pop bearing in mind that the Trump, you know, that they've raised over $5 billion in this IPO. So obviously the smaller the volume, the more extreme the exaggerations of share prices are likely to be depending on demand. But this is a big book. So going up $16, you know, going up 20-odd percent, you know, that's an extra billion dollars on top of, you know, on top of the $5 billion IPO. So it's an interesting one because we said last week on the pod, let's not judge the IPO underwriters who priced it at $51. Let's not judge the success of the IPO until the market settles and it's still, you know, it's been trading for 6 days, right? So it's not anywhere near its settled stable price that usually happens once the first earnings report has come out 3 months into the launch of the IPO. But it's now down to $55 a share. So it's come off from its $66 high. So $51 priced. Up to $66, down to $55. So, you know, it's feeling like it's kind of probably appropriately priced. And remember, you know, the IPO was 12 times oversubscribed and we had this roster of anchor investors putting in that $735 million. So they did all that and they had 28 banks on the ticket. So they did absolutely threw the kitchen, the kind of IPO kitchen sink at this deal and they managed to get it away and get it away very successfully, which has given confidence to all of these London buses waiting in the wings thinking, all right, I'm quite interested in IPOing. I'm getting all of my ducks in a row. Let's have a look at what Arm does and then pile in if it's successful. So I think the general consensus is Successful enough. I'd say a good IPO, all things considered. And by the way, it's a good IPO for the banks because they got paid $105 million for their troubles. So not a bad little payday, but there's still, yeah, obviously there's still a lot of question marks about the IPO market, which may well get resolved by Instacart, the next company we're going to talk about.

Yeah, and I know that one's really dominated the last couple of days. I think when, from when we're recording this, it was their first day trading, uh, yesterday. So yeah, tell me a little bit about, about that story and how that's probably a unique story in itself.

Yeah, so Instacart is the, uh, is the US e-commerce, uh, kind of grocery platform. So it basically is a technology company that helps grocery groceries get delivered to individuals, to consumers. And it's an interesting story and it's a really good representation of what we say quite a lot when we're teaching here at Amplify, which is, you know, a company is either a good deal or a bad deal depending on the price. You know, it's still the same company, but if it's at a good price, then it's a really good deal. If it's overpriced, then it's a terrible deal. And this is kind of the history of Instacart. Now, Instacart was founded back in 2012, and it was one of— it got its break on the Y Combinator venture accelerator. You might have spoken about this back a few months ago in the podcast, but that is the kind of the Ivy League finishing school or maybe even starting school for high-potential startups. Just looking through the roster of illustrious alumni, you've got the likes of Stripe, Airbnb, DoorDash, Coinbase, Dropbox, Gusto, Flexport, GitLab, Reddit, Docker, all coming through this accelerator program where it's very, very hard to get on. And then they turbocharge your business with amazing advice, amazing access, a really robust 6-month accelerated startup environment. So Instacart went through that process, right? And at that point, Vinod Khosla, Khosla of Khosla Ventures, invested $1 million of his own money. That's an extremely low valuation. Who knows what it was, but not very much, right? Right at the pre-seed very nascent, very risky level, thinking about valuation, whether it's a good deal or not. So fast forward 10 years, well, 2012 up to 2023, the company in 2021 during the venture hype cycle was valued, was valued as at $39 billion. So it went from nothing to $39 billion in 9 years. Hype cycle, pretty crazy, mad valuation. Uh, the internal valuation that happened back in March of 2023, so their own internal kind of view of how much the company's worth, valued the company at about $13 billion. Now this is all important because the IPO launched yesterday at the top end of its price range, which had already been upgraded to $30 a share. Giving the company a market capitalization of $9.3 billion. So is this a good deal? Think about it from Khosla, who invested, right, invested $1 million right at the beginning. Yeah, $1 million at $20 million valuation. It's now worth $9.3 billion. That's a good deal. The CEO who owned 10% of the company on the IPO, It's now worth $1.1 billion. That's a good deal. But for any kind of sucker venture capitalist that invested in 2021, $39 billion, this is terrible. This is a haircut. This is a kind of 60, 70% haircut. Well, no, more than 60, 70% haircut. This is an absolutely horrible, horrible deal. So, you know, it all depends, you know, is this a good thing? Is this a bad thing? It depends. At what point you, you drank the Kool-Aid, um, and when you got in during the hype cycle.

Yeah, it's, it's such a good lesson for life, this idea of like looking around and looking at your peer group and looking at others and just understanding different perspectives. I think that story really sums that up. It's like, what, the founder exits with a $1 billion plus fortune And then the VCs are like, oh my goodness, this is like the worst possible scenario. So interesting. It's like I was working with some interns yesterday and they were doing trading in the live market and they were trading and they were making P&Ls, kind of profit losses of about $2,000. And I was like, they were like, that's my rent. And so from that person's perspective, that's like a month's accommodation. Whereas from a trader's point of view, and I think this is one of the things, I don't know if you found this, Stephen, when you were working particularly on large M&A deals, you kind of become a little bit, um, it becomes very abstract what you're doing, and the numbers don't really mean the same as probably what it means to other people because you're just looking at it from a totally different lens.

Yeah, and we're terrible at thinking about large numbers, aren't we? We're really, especially when it comes to monetary terms, you know, What does it mean to have a billion dollars? What does it mean for Blackstone, who have just entered the S&P 500, to have a trillion dollars of assets under management? It's, you know, our brains are not kind of wired to deal with those, that, that, you know, that number of zeros on the end of a 1. Uh, so, so yeah, it's, it's really good to try and contextualize and then try and see it from the perspectives of different incentives and, uh, on things like this. But just to, just to wrap up, maybe on Instacart. I put this in the deal of the week back on Monday, but just to try and draw some threads together, remember Arm had a bunch of cornerstone investors that would anchor the deal and give confidence to institutional investors that are wanting to buy a piece of the IPO. Now Instacart, $660 million raised, $400 million of which were tied up in Cornerstone investors, many of whom were venture investors in previous rounds. So it's, it's, it's an interesting one. It's kind of like, all right, these venture investors, many of whom have actually still made quite a lot of money because they would've invested in previous rounds when the valuation was much, much lower. They're like, okay, we want our exit, but we want to make sure that our exit is bulk stopped with us.

That just sounds, that just sounds, uh, illegal activity, surely. It's like, I've got a pot of money, let's just throw some more money at it so I can like exercise my option. It's just, it's— that seems very dubious, that type of activity.

Yeah, I think it's, it's, it's, it's all about, it's all about information, isn't it? And it's all about, it's all about who Who, who is the sucker if there is one? And so often, especially with direct listings, which we've spoken about previously in Coinbase, you know, the sucker is the retail investor that gets given all of the kind of dopamine rush of an exciting company to buy into whilst the, uh, the, the investors cash out and go off to Aspen and, you know, drink their champagne and things like that. So, so yeah, it, you know, look, there was, there was, there was obviously full disclosure, you know, this was a big story within the, within the industry. And cornerstone investors are not, you know, are pretty standard. But yeah, it reeks of doing everything that you possibly can to get a successful IPO away, much like the Arm deal, you know, get as many cornerstone investors as possible, make sure that we're talking about it as much as we can in the news, get the best banks on it. And, you know, It was up as much as 40% yesterday and closed up 12% from its $30 IPO price. Again, we'll wait for it to settle out. And remember, these investors have lock-in periods of, you know, 6 months, 12 months, et cetera. So we'll wait till the dust has settled. But it's, yeah, it's another interesting IPO and it's there's definitely some similarities coming through across the ones that we're looking at today.

Okay, two more on the docket then. So let's go with Klaviyo, who, full disclosure, I had to look at on YouTube to check if I'm saying their company name correctly. And what was more funny, you said that on their company website, there's a video of employees all saying something slightly different, which for a marketing company, struck me as pretty crazy. But tell me about the Klaviyo story.

Well, I think it's Klaviyo. But anyway, we're still getting confused. I'm going to call it Klaviyo. I'm going to go out on a limb. And again, this is not good. Call yourself Instacart, simple. Call yourself Arm, simple. Even call yourself Birkenstock, we all know how to pronounce it. Klaviyo, Klaviyo, it's a tricky one.

I, I read a— there's a book I'm reading at the moment and it talks about kind of social studies and, uh, and, and socioeconomic kind of classes and stuff like that. And it was saying about actually if you're called James or David or whether you're called something more peculiar, um, actually the data says en masse that if you have a more, uh, recognizable name, talking about obviously the country that we're residing in, the UK, you're more likely to be given extra help. You're more likely to get a promotion. And it's only because part of the study says that regardless of talent, you are just the name that's recognizable and memorable in someone's head. So yeah, I know this is, I'm clutching at straws here, but it's interesting. Like I can't even say a company's name is, uh, uh, well look, it's gonna stick with me.

Um, but it doesn't give a lot of hope to the Stevens and the Anthonys of this world, and they're not the most standout names. But anyway, maybe I'll change my name. Um, yeah, so Klaviyo. Um, so this is, yeah, this is the third in the kind of roster of the opening of the IPO market. And we don't need to talk too deeply. I just want to, again, try and tie some threads together. I think this is an interesting one. Remember Arm, successful IPO. Instacart seems to be a successful IPO. Now Klaviyo and Arm, very profitable company, very well-known kind of a piece of industry infrastructure, as we discussed last week. Instacart, profitable company, you know, tech company, but it's got, you know, it's pretty embedded in certain markets. It's very good growth. Now, Klaviyo is a marketing automation platform, you know, pure play tech company. It is profitable. It made $15 million of net income on trailing 12 months revenue of $320 million, but it's pricing its IPO at $30 a share, which will give the company a market capitalization of $9 billion. So $9 billion of $320 million of revenue, you know, let's call it 29 times sales, right? This is, you know, which is nothing like what Instacart was going for, right? So I think that was about 6 or 7 times. So this is now, I think this is probably going to push the tolerance level of investors a little bit more than Arm, which although it's very highly valued, is a well-known player and a big IPO. Instacart, which is, you know, from on a price sales perspective, which is what we look at a lot with these IPOs, it was, is a lot more kind of rationally valued. So Klaviyo, this is going to be an interesting one. It's not very profitable. It's fast growing, It smells a little bit more like the 2021 IPOs in terms of the type of company. But then again, they're going for the cornerstone investment model. They've got BlackRock and AllianceBernstein putting in $100 million led by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Citi. So they're getting the big beasts out in terms of leading the deal. So they're again trying to ride on the back of these two other successful IPOs with a very similar playbook. Pricing at the top end of their range. In fact, they're going over the top end of their range because they're seeing very, very healthy subscriptions. But this does feel a little bit more like the 2021 IPOs that we can talk about as a bit of a cautionary tale.

And maybe before we get to some of those cautionary tales, because I know you've got some excellent examples of very recognizable companies. Perhaps we could just have a quick look at Birkenstock.

Okay. Well, look, I want to give you a, I want to ask you a question about Birkenstock. How many pairs of Birkenstocks does the average US consumer of Birkenstocks own? How many pairs?

Okay. So what, someone who owns a pair, but how many do they own?

Exactly. Exactly.

Well, the fact that you're asking me, it's more than one. So I'm going to go for 3.

3.6 pairs.

I mean, 3.6 pairs, my God. So what would you get? You get different— you have your home pair, maybe you have your, your going out pair, but I guess you have different colors for different outfits. Yeah, I guess it's moved, it's moved into the realm of fashion though, isn't it? It's gone from its original purpose, which was like a Jesus sandal back in the day, to now being that your dad wore your uncle, uncle would turn up at the barbecue on the weekend and you'd be like, what? Put those toes away. So now I saw the camo ones, bright pink. Like, I guess if it becomes a fast fashion moment, then I guess you have to have multiple, right?

Yeah. And this is it. I mean, so I own two pairs, uh, full disclosure. I own the kind of the classic Jesus sandals and a pair of Birkenstock slippers, which I love. Not sure whether that's going to move the share price up or down, but anyway, so they are very much on trend. You're absolutely right. And you see that, you know, I mean, they've done a brilliant job inserting themselves into the right parts of society that's going to continue to increase the value of the brand and the hype around the brand. And it's a really interesting one because although they experience a hype moment at the moment, You know, they were famously in the Barbie movie, so I'm led to believe. And List, the consumer website, saw its searches for Birkenstock jump 110% right after the Barbie movie was released. So it's kind of, it's doing a great job at hitting the zeitgeist at the right time, especially in preparation for this IPO. And what I'm going to be super interested to find out a little bit more about on this IPO is, you know, is this a really enduring, you know, traces its history back to 1774, you know, it's owned by El Capitan, which is the LMVH investment vehicle, you know, trading and doing most valuable company in Europe until very recently. Doing an incredible job trading in luxury, trading in mature exclusivity. And you know, you get a pretty nice premium in the markets for that. Is it going to go that way when IPOs, which would be brilliant, and you'd probably see the valuation go up from its $8 billion target, or is it going to go the way of Too Cautionary Tales? And you'll remember, I'm sure you remember both of these. Number one, Allbirds. You might remember Allbirds IPO. Again, very, very hypey. Allbirds were the kind of, uh, the trainer of choice if you were a Silicon Valley venture capitalist. It was, it almost became a bit of a trope that you'd have your Patagonia top and your Allbirds shoes and your guinea latte or whatever it might be. Um, a lot of hype. 95% off since its IPO listing, a 95% loss of value. Doc Martens, again, a pretty enduring, again, German, had its moment in the sun. Every teenager wanted to buy a pair of Doc Martens a few years ago, down 67% from its IPO. So this is going to be super interesting. Is it a hype cycle IPO, which is going to see us go down, down, down, down, down, Or is it a kind of enduring quasi-luxury brand that's going to deal in its longevity and its exclusivity? Again, not here to give investment advice. I have no idea, but it'd be really fun to watch the progress of Birkenstocks, and I'm going to keep buying the shoes.

So yeah, I know the common thread, like you touched on it earlier, is about from which perspective are you looking at this? And if I was part of the I guess if I had a, a company like Birkenstock or any clothing item, Allbirds, Doc Martens, they all fit in the same category of kind of these, these clothing items. Is it if I was on the strategy team of that company? So from my perspective, I just want to cash out. I've been waiting for this, I'm part of this, and I get an event and I get paid. So yeah, definitely taking these opportunities, as you said, these moments like Barbie or collaborations with Dior and, you know, give Kim Kardashian a free pair and she rocks it on Insta or whatever it is. But yeah, being an investor and then having certain legal requirements, like I'm locked in, I kind of get out for a period when it comes to fashion. Fashion is so fickle and it's so fast, and it's almost like that fashion cycle I mean, what was I watching? Uh, you'll laugh at this. I was flicking through Sky last night and I landed on some of the music channels and it was the '90s. There's a '90s music channel which is obviously for you and I the bread and butter. And it was, uh, Take That, I Want You Back for Good, 1995. They're all there and they look absolutely bang on trend.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

2023, I was like, my God, they look like the current advert for like, yeah, for, for a, for a fashion Paris walk show or something. But, um, the point being is I'm trying to make, I guess, here is that with the fashion names, I just feel like, yeah, I'd definitely be in it from an internal person working at the company from a strategic perspective. For an investment, if I was an investor I think I'd steer clear of fashion. It's just too, too rapid in its, in its change, particularly it's been almost like revolutionized by technology where something goes on TikTok and all of a sudden, bang, there's a new thing and then the old thing's gone and you just can't execute the IPO process quick enough.

Which is why the LVMH market capitalization is, is so high because it is, you know, it is the endure— well, it is a combination of enduring very exclusive fashion labels that seem to ride out hype cycles and ride out market trends and things like that. But I just want to very quickly go back to your point on kind of, again, we're always talking about different perspectives and investors and things like that. And I think what's interesting about all of these examples is looking at the process of raising money and then exiting, it feels a bit like a game of pass the parcel, right? Can you, you know, if I'm a, if I'm an early stage founder, I want to get a good valuation. That first investor wants to get a better second valuation. That third investor wants to get a better third valuation. And then at some point, you know, obviously the company's growing alongside. At some point there may be a moment where someone's left with the parcel and we realize that the company's not really all, all it's made up to be. So in the case of Instacart, that was the 2021 $39 billion valuation. I'm left with this valuation that I realize is probably a bit phony, and I'm left, you know, with the, with the parcel in my hand. Often again, we, you know, in these IPOs, it gets left with the retail investor or, or the institutional investor.

So just going back to the top of the show then, addressing that question, is the IPO market opening back up? So what are your thoughts on that, and, and how does this kind of compare to where we were just during that COVID boom?

Yeah. So I mean, we're a long way away. So just looking at some stats, there's been 113 IPOs this year. And bearing in mind the IPO market was pretty much shut in the first 6 months of the year. So it has ramped up. There was 181 IPOs last year in the depths of IPO winter and 1,035 IPOs in 2021.

Oh wow.

Increasingly. 2021's looking like this kind of, this case study year. And whenever we are, you know, walking through graphs of deal volume and value when we're teaching, we always spend a lot of time looking at 2021 because it is the biggest skyscraper in a bar chart and what the heck are SPACs doing and all of this kind of stuff. So yes, this is looking modest from an IPO perspective. And obviously the fact that we got 3 or 4 quite big ones coming in in quick succession. And I think CVC, private equity firms planning on listing in November as well. So you've got some, you know, you've got a decent pipeline and the investment bankers are going to be happy about this. But it's certainly, you know, 1,035 in 2021. That was, you know, I'd say that, that was just as degenerate a year in terms of trends, in terms of a normal functioning market as 2022. When there was only 181. So kind of somewhere in between feels about right. So is the market, is the IPO market back open? To an extent, and Klaviyo and Birkenstock will further cement that or otherwise.

I was just thinking actually to add to your cautionary tales, I wonder what some of those EV, US EV, Lucid and the like, I wonder how much they're down on the year. It's got to be in the 80s at least.

I'm going to give you, I'm going to give you, I'm going to give you another little challenge. Um, I was just looking back at 20, and you know, a lot of people that listen to this podcast are new students, and, and why should you know too much about 2021? Um, you might probably still back at school. Um, so back in 2021, I mean, all of the companies we've spoken about today, all 4 of them are profitable, right? Big difference between now and 2021. Just looking at some of the unprofitable venture-backed tech companies that went, that went public back in 2021. I'm going to give you a list of 5 companies. I want you to pick out the one company that you think the share price has actually gone up.

Okay.

Okay. Squarespace, the website maker, the online website maker. Duolingo, the language, the app-based language app. Bumble, the dating website, the dating app. Warby Parker. It's not really a tech company, but it sells sunglasses. Sells glasses, and Rivian, that, that EV manufacturer, or at least wants to manufacture electric vehicles. So which one? 4 of those 5 went down a bit, have gone down since 2021. One of them's gone up. What do you reckon?

Okay, so process of elimination. Yeah. I know it's not Rivian. So take that out. That leaves 4.

Correct.

So Then it comes to Bumble, twofold. I remember us talking about it. So if we're talking about it, I'm assuming it's gone down. And secondary to that, I think Bumble probably had its day in COVID when everyone was stuck at home trying to flirt and date. So I'm gonna strike Bumble out.

Correct.

That leaves 3. Duolingo, I guess, is tied to travel, and travel has opened up, but I don't— I'm gonna just— I'm just gonna take another view on that. I'm gonna scrub them out.

Okay.

That leaves me then with glasses or websites. So glasses, I'm just gonna go on the pure thinking of people are not at home so much during those COVID years. Mm-hmm. So they're out and about. They're not looking at phones and tablets and screens as much. So glasses demand has flattened, and therefore I'm going to go Squarespace.

You're wrong. So Rivian down 71%. Mm-hmm. Warby Parker down 70%. Bumble down 65%. Squarespace down 41%. Wow. Duolingo up 59%. Wow.

Okay.

Now your logic was absolutely right, but I didn't tell you any of the pricing, right? So, so Rivian, it, again, we talk about price sales. It had zero sales. So you can't even do a price sales calculation when it, when it IPO'd at a $66 billion market cap. Warby Parker priced at 10 times trailing 12 months revenue, really, really high for what is effectively a glasses company. Duolingo actually got it right and they priced at 2 times trailing 12 months revenue, really modest actually. And that is actually, that's the reason why it's the only one that's been successful.

Can I just ask questions on that point?

Yeah.

So when it's modest, who is leading that? The company or the advisor? Because there's conflict of interest there. So how do you, or is it because the strategic idea is that they don't want an event to exit the founder and the owners. They just basically want an event to get liquidity to then grow. Is that, is that the idea? And then you have to like tame the bankers when they're getting their paws on bigger fees.

Yeah, I have absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I don't know the Duolingo IPO very well, but I can imagine it could have been priced a lot more back, you know, a lot higher back in 2021. But yeah, so this is probably, as you say, this is not a dash for the exit. This is not a kind of, you know, I'm so tired of running this company and the investors are bored of being in it. It's an opportunity like IPOs, you know, historically have been. It's an opportunity to raise some money at a relatively good valuation that's not going to anchor the company at an overvaluation and then have a bad news story for the next 2 or 3 years. So that was probably the conversations that were happening. And, you know, if I'm part of a company, let's say I got some stock options on the IPO as an employee, and we all got very excited when the bell was rung, and I see that my share price is up 59%, I'm going to be pretty happy. I'm going to be quite motivated. Whereas if I got some stock options in Bumble or Squarespace or Warby Barker, I'd be like, well, what kind of company am I working for? Market thinks we're 70% worse than when I got my options. So yeah, there's a lot more to it than just trying to get the maximum. Obviously the bankers want the maximum valuation, but Cool.

More quiz questions in future like that. And I'm sure the listeners had a go, had a stab at that. So well done if you got it, if you got it right. But look, let's aim to then wrap up with this idea of a lot of people are in the application process, applying to roles in banking or equity capital markets, maybe specifically, and they get asked this question about, talk about a deal. But rather than just talk about deal, we've kind of covered that. Can they have a little extra special sauce to make them sound a little bit more well-informed and knowledgeable about actually the role that banks play and the breakup of the division of kind of influence and power that they have within the deal? And I, this comes from a place where I think I read on your post about Instacart that Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan were leading it, but then there was, I think it was Barclays, Citi, and BAML also on the ticket. So how do you break those roles up?

Yeah. So the best way to think about it, or the best way to understand where different banks sit in an IPO process is just to look at the second page of the prospectus. And it's a lovely, it's a lovely visual representation of where these people, these banks sit. So the biggest font at the top of the stack are the lead left or the lead bookrunners, right? So this is the most important banks in the process. They come up the top and they're the biggest fonts. And then underneath, maybe you call them the co-managers or whatever it might be. There are different titles. You'd have the secondary tier of banks, and we'll talk about how important they are in a minute. And then below that, in an even smaller font, you have the kind of subscribing banks or, or whatever it might be. Now, if you are applying for a rolling equity capital markets team, You know, you want to be on as many lead left transactions as possible because if you are a leading bank in the deal, if you're the biggest font at the top of the page, you're not only providing your ability to underwrite a deal, i.e., to pay, take a percentage of the deal and allocate it to your institutional investor base, but you are playing the role of advisor, confidant, roadshow manager, price setter, all of the fun stuff that comes with doing an IPO. If you're lower down on the ticket, either you're just given a smaller allocation in order to get away to your institutional investor base, or maybe you're put on the ticket because you're providing some auxiliary services. Maybe you've lent them money or you've helped them issue a convertible bond or something like that, and they put you on the ticket because you want a cred. It's all about creds in the banking world. So you want to be getting on that top-tier lead left position because then that's where you get to influence pricing. That's where you get to do all of the stuff that we do in our IPO simulations, the roadshows, the pitch deck creation, the price setting, the modeling, and all of that stuff. So that's where you want to be.

Yeah. So if a student could describe, like, right there, it's like, Steven, why do you want to work in equity capital markets then? And then like, yeah, that, the response you just gave then was so good because it sounded like, you know, it's super interesting, right? And there's lots of responsibility, there's lots of variation within it. And so, and understanding that hierarchy or that structure, I think, yeah, definitely. I don't hear many people who are giving careers advice talk about it in that way. So that's great.

Yeah. And the last thing I'd say is, is in this whole area, the Deal Room podcast, we are advisors. Advisory is the word that we need to keep remembering. And any position that you can get into in an investment banking team where you feel like you are a trusted advisor, where a company relies upon you to provide high-quality advice, that's where you want to land because that's where it gets really interesting. I was speaking to an old colleague yesterday who said, you know, 150 CFOs have my phone number, um, and, you know, they can, they can phone me up and have a bit of a moan, or they can ask my advice or sound me out on something. You know, he's a managing director, but that's where you want to be aiming for because it becomes a much more personable strategic role. You know, you're not going to get there straight away, but that's the path that you want to be on.

Oh, sounds like your friend has a lot of leverage for a pay rise right there.

Yeah, he bought the drinks.

All right, cool. Well, let's wrap it up. Thanks everyone for listening. If you have made it to the end of the show, thank you for sticking with us. And of course, as ever, feel free to connect with both Stephen and I on our LinkedIn on both the bottom of the show notes. However, we forgot to mention, Stephen, M&A Finance Accelerator. Just to finish, tell us a little bit about this launch of this new product that you are releasing.

Yeah, absolutely. So you'll see it coming out on LinkedIn and in the Market Maker, our newsletter as well. So Amplify has historically done a sales and trading finance accelerator, which is open to all students. It's a kind of and we go around the country and go around Europe and, and, and do these fantastic simulations. We are launching the M&A version of that Finance Accelerator. The first event, the first simulation, it's gonna be on October 5th. We are gonna post all about it over the next couple of weeks. It's a free sign-up. It's a free event. It's an opportunity for you to learn a bit more about the industry, test your skills, test your Excel skills, test your financial modeling skills, and maybe even put forward to, uh, to a place in our M&A Academy.

Cool, sounds great. Well, with that, we'll wrap it up. Thanks everyone, and catch you next week. Thanks, Stephen.

Thank you.