The first business tech IPO of the year is a smash hit with a 50% pop

Mulesoft, the first enterprise technology IPO of 2017, is already looking like a big winner, popping around 50% above its $17 debut price to about $25.50 a share in its first few hours of trading.

On Thursday night, Mulesoft announced that $17 price, well above its announced $12-14 range. At that price, Mulesoft raised $221 million at a $2.9 million fully-diluted market cap in its initial offering.

In its last investment round as a private company in May 2015, Mulesoft held a valuation of about $1.5 billion, so this IPO represents a significant uptick in its value.

That's a good sign for Mulesoft. And since Mulesoft is the first enterprise tech company to go public in 2017, it might inspire more companies of a similar stripe to follow suit. Already, $1.5 billion security startup Okta filed its own preliminary IPO paperwork earlier this week.

Still, the massive price increase means that Mulesoft left money on the table when it offered because it could have set its IPO price higher than $17, potentially raising more money from investors.

Mulesoft offers a cloud platform for what's known as "application programming interfaces," or APIs. These are what allows different apps and technologies to talk to one another. Mulesoft makes it easier for tech products to integrate, work together and share data and information.

The key stats from Mulesoft's original S-1 filing to go public are:

• Total revenue for 2016 $187.7 million, up from $110.3 million in 2015
• Gross profit in 2016 of $138.7 million (before items like R&D, sales and marketing and G & A), up from $78.1 million in 2015
• Net loss: -$49.6 million in 2016, down from -$65.4 million in 2015.