Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.
Yesterday afternoon, Vroom, an online car buying service, filed to go public. Based on its SEC filing, Vroom is a highly-successful private company in fundraising terms that has attracted over $700 million during its life as a startup. T. Rowe Price, AutoNation, Durable Capital Partners, General Catalyst and other investors fueled the firm during its youth according to Crunchbase data. Vroom most recently raised $254 million in December 2019, a Series H round that valued the company at around $1.5 billion. From its mid-2013 Series A to today, Vroom has tried to accelerate from the startup world to the grown-up domain of the public markets. How did it do? Finding out is our goal this morning. We’re also curious why the firm would pursue an IPO today; public offerings tend to shun volatile, uncertain periods. So let’s dig into the numbers and do a bit of a unicorn check-up. What does a private, car-focused e-commerce company worth $1.5 billion look like under the hood?