EquityZen
EquityZen CEO Atish Davda said secondary market demand is a big indicator of when a company is ready to go public.
It's not always clear which companies are preparing to go public. From raising venture capital, to confidential filings and mandated silent periods, it can take years of planning before a company lets it slip that it has its eye on a big exit event.
But EquityZen has its ways.
EquityZen is a secondary markets platform that lets startup employees sell their equity to institutional investors before a company goes public.
Around 125 companies currently work with EquityZen, according to CEO Atish Davda. The means the startup has a strong grasp on which startups are in demand with big investors, and which private companies are commanding the biggest premiums for their shares.
"When we take a look at how the private market is treating a company ahead of a potential exit, it's generally a reasonable indicator of what kind of demand there might be on the public market," Davda told Business Insider.
To create its predictions, Davda said, EquityZen looked at which companies spoke publicly about big exits, which ones recently hired a chief financial officer, and who had been in the news a lot lately. But the team also looked at one piece of data that's not generally available: how much investor interest there is in buying a slice of the company.
"For us, it isn't truly validated until we're seen an increase in demand," he said. "Not only is that a signal that a planned exit is imminent, but it also helps us understand how an IPO might fare in the public markets."
Here are the tech companies that EquityZen predicts will go public next year: