It is now time to seriously research, originate and invest in growth capital and late-stage IPO deals in Silicon Valley. Spotify and Dropbox, both profiled in this column, were a spectacular success in the IPO market. Shasta Ventures invested $17 million in software firm Zuora and netted $150 million at the IPO. This is supermoney IPO game.

A family office friend in the DIFC Tower where I work invested in Airbnb in a private financing round at a $1 billion valuation five years ago. Airbnb is now valued at $31 billion and the IPO is 2 years away. Will Airbnb double in value before its IPO? Yes. Will non-strategic investors from the Gulf be allowed to invest in arguably the fastest-growing hospitality network in human history? Dream on.

I first experienced the deal-hunting business in the late-1990s. I used to haunt the offices of Wall Street investment banks in the Embarcadero Centre in San Francisco and the minimalist boardrooms of the world's top venture capital firms in Sand Hill Road in the Valley. Deal-hunting Internet and software companies became an obsession for me. I used to regularly fly from Newark to San Francisco on United Flight 93, which was later hijacked on 9/11. When bankers in the States asked me where I was from, I would reply with a sense of irony "British Airways". Deal-hunting in the pre-IPO market is the ultimate game of three-dimension chess and Wall Street mind games. I loved it with a passion that has not abated even now. Bliss it was that dawn to be alive but to be young was absolute heaven, wrote the poet William Wordsworth about his time in Paris as the mobs stormed Citoyen Louis's Bastille. Yes, bliss it was that dawn to be alive at the birth of the Internet Age.

Even though it all ended in tears in 2001, the passion for technology's brave new world never died in. Juno Online, my first deal in Dubai, was a wildly successful IPO and ultimately merged with Netzero with a whimper. I will be proud until the end of my life that I helped some special people in UAE earn 10 times their money on deals I originated from my office in Mountain View in the Valley - while my wife and twins lived at home in Jumeirah with my parents.

The IPO market is so different from what I knew in the mid-1990's. Mega unicorns like Uber and Airbnb have opted to remain private companies, as they have access to a global tsunami of cash. The UAE IPO market has been moribund in the past decade. Almost every major IPO in the UAE stock market since 2009 is trading well below its offer price. The last decade, to use a Dickensian metaphor for life, was the best of times and the worst of times for IPO investors.

I now specialise mainly in software/cloud security and e-commerce companies that have the potential to generate parabolic growth and at least triple our firm's money when they go public on Wall Street. These rare diamonds must be researched, analysed, wooed, structured in offshore tax efficient vehicles and risk managed - the Great Game of tech.

As an acolyte of Ian Fleming and Commander Bond, I cannot resist the IPO of Aston Martin, albeit shaken and not stirred. Yet I would only bid if the IPO offer value is 3 billion and co-leads include Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, where I can taste the syndicate pot! India's NSE IPO has been delayed due to the business dispute with the Sebi, slashing the pre-IPO grey market valuation to below $6 billion. The Indigo Airlines IPO has doubled to almost 1500 rupees since its IPO. Take profits now due to oil and Karnataka risk. Do not miss the DocuSign IPO. Revenue growth is 50 per cent in a $25 billion automation process software market. This puppy is the world's top e-signature solution and a credible post IPO five bagger. Vietnam's hottest property developer, has filed for a $2 billion IPO. Vietnam is the most attractive real estate market in Southeast Asia and Vinhomes's strategic investor is GIC, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund. Due diligence done, la.

The writer is a global equities strategist and fund manager. He can be contacted at: mateinkhalid09@gmail.com.

 

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