Years from founding to exit in tech

We looked at how long it took 224 publicly traded tech companies to exit. Specifically, we took the difference between the founding year and the last year financials were released as a private company. The data is below and organized between SaaS companies (153) and Other Tech (71).

SaaS takes a long time. On median SaaS companies took 10 years to IPO/exit since founding and 11 years on average. If we isolate only those companies that exited in 2019 or 2020, those companies took 11 years to exit on median.

Other Tech exits faster (generally B2C focused). This category includes Social Media, Marketplaces, Ad Based businesses, Hardware, Ride Sharing, and other B2C tech. On median the exit took 7 years and on average 8 years.

The 90’s were awesome. Netscape IPO’d in 1994, the same year it was founded. Netflix IPO’d 4 years after its 1997 founding. Google took 5 years after being founded in 1998, TakeTwo took 6 years (founded in 1993), Amazon took 2 years, and Overstock took 3 years. Companies with a pre-2000 founding vintage got to exit very fast even though they were far smaller than companies that IPO today. The 90’s were an incredible time.

Visit us at blossomstreetventures.com and email me directly at sammy@blossomstreetventures.com. All founders and funds welcome! We invest in companies with run rate revenue of $1mm to $30mm, with year over year growth of 20% to 50%+ depending on revenue. We lead or follow in growth rounds and special situations like inside rounds, small rounds, rushed rounds, corralling investors with our term sheet, bridges, inbetweeners, cap table clean up, and extensions. We can commit in 3 weeks and our check is $1mm to $3mm. Also visit https://blossomstreetventures.com/metrics/ for always up-to-date SaaS metrics.