Show HN: IPOs.fyi – Missing Out on IPOs Was Frustrating, So I Fixed It

by jkaykin • 6 years ago

77 67 6 years ago

jkaykin7• 6 years ago

A few times I saw news about a company that I liked and, upon Googling, noticed that it had gone public a few weeks prior. By this time, the stock had already shot up. So I set out to fix this problem and built IPOs.fyi.

It's by no means finished but I am proud that I built my first software product and would love feedback. If you are interested, you can use promo code HN20 for 20% off the first month!

shawnk• 6 years ago

It looks cool. Still growing as an investor so not going to join just yet..but I’ve shared with a few friends... what software and services did you use to build out the site? If you don’t mind sharing. I like how it goes from sign up to paywall.

jkaykin7• 6 years ago

Thanks! Built in Python/Flask to scrape IPOs and pull the financial docs from the SEC. A few cron jobs make it all work. I wanted to get this out quickly and didn't want to deal with building auth/payment infra, so I actually used Memberstack for that piece. It's extremely easy to use.

Let me know if you have any more questions

mikekoscinski3• 6 years ago

In addition to (or instead of) a 20% discount, a referral system might be interesting to you. 'Refer a friend and you each get one month free', or something to that effect.

Paid ads are pretty expensive in everything financial services because churns are low and thus LTVs are so high. So, if you want to grow this, paid ads will be tricky to make work. Never mind that you should stay organic as long as you can.

Serious investors seem to make a habit of knowing other serious investors. Often, in large quantities. There might be something interesting to explore there.

lefstathiou• 6 years ago

Congrats on the MVP. People who are serious about getting these notifications are likely subscribing to IPOscoop or something similar. Not meant to discourage but feels a bit beta to me. Get eye balls and iterate. There are a lot of problems buried in EDGAR filings that I believe people are willing to pay for.

jkaykin7• 6 years ago

Thank you! I definitely agree, this is an MVP for sure. Any feedback you have? Any ideas on a direction I should take it?

pkhamre• 6 years ago

I would love to get a free preview or 7 free days or something before I decide to pay. Would like to see what the content looks like :)

debdut• 6 years ago

true

jkaykin7• 6 years ago

Heard this feedback from a few folks and definitely agree. How do you think I should differentiate the paid vs free option?

djstein• 6 years ago

don't differentiate, just make it a free trial

jamestimmins• 6 years ago

Having a free option sounds like a bad idea. Given that your users are by definition people interested in investing money, they should be perfectly suited to pay. Really what they're paying for is time, since they could find all of this info on their own, but their time is worth more than $20 to do so.

Edit: But I do like the idea of a free trial for a week or a month.

streblo2• 6 years ago

Agree about a free trial. I'd consider something like $5/month for email updates, and then upsell into more advanced features that automate a process for me. If this thing could actually help me buy (e.g. hook it up to my Robinhood account and insert an order opening day) then I'd be willing to spend more.

ViViDboarder• 6 years ago

Maybe a free version could be something that only announces that days IPOs or last week or something? That would demonstrate all the content without providing nearly as much value as it’s not enough time to participate.

But an X week trial is probably a good option as well to give people an idea without having to keep up a free and non-free version.

mikekoscinski3• 6 years ago

You could randomly select one company to feature from a list of N upcoming IPOs. E.g. `${sampleCo} begins trading this week, along with N-1 others...` You could leave the N-1 other tickers blurred out, or you could literally write 'along with seven other companies. Subscribe today to receive all IPO updates'. Something to that effect.

After all, customers will pay you for convenience, not proprietary data. As other commenters noted, this data is all freely available on NYSE, et al.

Your value prop == 'aggregated list of all upcoming IPOs in your inbox'. Not 'some' IPOs. You can demonstrate that the product works well by providing one free sample.

bgs264• 6 years ago

Perhaps make all the past notifications you generated fully visible with no login required. Nothing sensitive about the past? Show the dates you'd have sent the content and what it would have looked like. Would be good for SEO too I think.

cvhashim2• 6 years ago

Yes something like a free trial.

cvhashim2• 6 years ago

This is an awesome idea, good luck

jzig3• 6 years ago

This is an interesting concept however I think it is priced too high. I also agree with others that it would be helpful to see what it looks like before signing up. Good luck!

eat_veggies• 6 years ago

If this is a product targeted to investors looking to make far more than $19/mo from their investments, then this price is fair, no?

jzig3• 6 years ago

Perhaps but at least for me I wouldn't be investing in every IPO and a large part is just speculation rather than real long term investing. There is no guarantee to making more than $228/year.

jkaykin7• 6 years ago

Thank you for sharing this feedback, it's something I was wondering. My thinking for this pricing is that if you just act on one of the signals and are right, you will hopefully have a return of more than a year's worth of subscription costs YMMV

jzig3• 6 years ago

Yeah I get it and maybe that's true. I honestly don't have enough experience speculating on IPOs or individual stocks in general - most of my assets are in automatically rebalanced target date funds or index funds.

Edit: So for me it is mostly about curiosity and staying informed. Perhaps making occasional bets.

dataminded• 6 years ago

Please let your actual numbers drive your decision here.

There is always someone who would have bought it for less money but who actually probably is never going to buy it at all. (Not referring to the OP at all)

Look at your funnel, test where appropriate and decision from there.

streblo2• 6 years ago

I doubt many people will see it like that. This tool is for me if I've been missing IPOs. If I've been missing them, I've probably never made money off of one and I have no frame of reference for how much of a return I'd get.

Better off doing a freemium model or a free trial and then upselling the customer once they've understood the value prop.

iamben• 6 years ago

Potential alternative model - find a brokerage/trading platform with a good affiliate program (ideally with a revshare option), offer this service free with a sign-up but then give members tutorials on how to make money using the IPO data.

If it were me, I'd start on a leads model - see how many you can drive and get paid per lead, then switch to revshare when you're confident the lead quality is good.

You also then have a massive email database of users interested in financial markets and services (because it was free to sign up) - plenty of opportunity to market them there, products, weekly tips, whatever.

mikekoscinski3• 6 years ago

I think your pricing instincts are directionally correct. They may be off by a bit, but I don't think it's by a magnitude. Perhaps you settle at $15, but I think charging ~$2-5/mo for this would be much too little. Might as well hold at $19 for now and see how it goes. If you can't get early adopters at that price point I don't think pricing is your main concern. The pain is acute enough that any passable product should be in-demand.

For pricing context, FinViz elite (https://finviz.com/elite) costs ~$25/mo. Other, newer tools (Atom, Koyfin) are free. However, these are research tools, not notification tools. Anecdotally, notification tools seem to command higher prices.

I would guess that false negatives are your biggest churn risk. Meaning, subscribers will be angry if your list fails to cover one opportunity that they miss out on.

I think subscribers will (and should) also expect 0 downtime at this price. So, it may be better to focus on reliability over new feature rollouts. In this market, a plaintext email with companies, tickers, and list dates would be a significant upgrade over existing consumer (read: not Bloomberg) alternatives.

mellosouls• 6 years ago

I think if you are submitting a Show HN, it is frowned on if there is no way to see it without paying.

From the guidelines, although its not explicitly stated I would think your submission here is not really playing the game. Just a heads up (and I may be wrong, but that's been said before), best wishes with it anyway.

Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with. HN users can try it out, give you feedback, and ask questions in the thread.

wavepruner• 6 years ago

IPO calendar for NYSE: https://www.nyse.com/ipo-center/filings

IPO calendar for NASDAQ: https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/ipos

Market Watch's IPO calendar: https://www.marketwatch.com/tools/ipo-calendar

Anyone know if CBOE publishes an IPO calendar?

thrownaway954• 6 years ago

thank you!!!

charlesdenault• 6 years ago

Does the product literally just scrape this data? Does it include the SPACs/direct listings/reverse mergers that seem to be increasingly popular?

epa2• 6 years ago

An SPAC is a public company already, so it would not be included here.

motoxpro• 6 years ago

Seems a bit disingenuous for the creator to scrape public info and then charge for it. Like everyone else has said, can't see what the product is, but to pay 20$ a month for notifications and a "community" that could contain 1 person or 10,000 people seems a bit much.

I think it would be beneficial to reposition to "Help find the best IPO to buy" because saying that this data doesn't exist for free is just not true and makes me a user feel like you are running a get rich quick scheme.

Not to say that there isn't value here. I think people would love to discuss IPO's and making it easier to do research, etc. is definitely a value add. Just think the messaging needs to change.

Also, you mentioned that the 20$ (or 240$ per year) will be made back and from an investment standpoint, that's also not necessarily true. Think it's praying on the misconception people have that IPO will always be profitable so I should pay 20$ to invest right away.

smashthepants2• 6 years ago

Disingenuous? There's no value in collating information from different sources?

None of the words on the home page imply the information can't be manually collated for free.

And this is a Show HN, it's reasonable to assume you would be the first person in the IPOs.fyi community. That doesn't make anything OP is doing disingenuous. All communities start with 1 person...

jonnycat2• 6 years ago

My brokerage (Fidelity) does this for free. But the problem is not knowing about the IPO, it's getting an allocation. As a retail investor, it would seem my position size is not big enough to get any shares. I know this varies by brokerage, so this may or may not be typical of others.

If you could pool together retail investors to increase the possibility of getting shares allocated, that would be something special...

basch• 6 years ago

It's not quite the same, but the ETF's; USA - IPO, FPX; and International - IPOS, FPXI, FPXE.

They buy IPO's after they launch, and then sell them after a set duration, automatically managing inflow of new and outflow of old. Youre not able to buy specific companies, youre instead buying into the idea, trends, and behaviors of IPOs as a whole. They also dont capture the huge initial jump in price.

Go with a 60:40 IPO:FPXI to capture all the ipo momentum in the world.

nicoburns2• 6 years ago

They also dont capture the huge initial jump in price.

I don't understand why this is allowed. Why don't they structure IPOs as an auction, such that the initial sale is at the market price.

bozoUser• 6 years ago

Is the advantage of getting an allocation purely that the said investor buys the said stock at the price that is agreed upon in the price range of the filings with NASDAQ/NYSE ?

Also are these investors usually the HNW individuals who typically invest Millions thru the investment banking firms that are underwriting the said IPO, so win/win for the HNW and the banking firm in the way that it can guarantee the IPO'ing company that it can confidently underwrite and is also using the HNWs money to cover most of the risk ?

Please correct me if I am wrong in understanding this complex process.

jonnycat2• 6 years ago

Yes, the advantage is getting the actual IPO price, rather than buying on the open market. For example, BYND IPO'd at $25, but shares hit the open market in the mid $40s (and climbed very quickly into the $60s). That kind of performance is obviously not guaranteed, but is not exactly atypical for hot offerings.

pedant888• 6 years ago

This may come across as pedantic, but the terminology on the page is a bit imprecise and may suggest a lack of sophistication for somebody selling a financial information product. You're not helping anybody avoid missing out on an IPO because you're not helping anybody be part of the IPO market itself. (Generally only big investors with a relationship to the underwriters or friends of the issuer get to be participate in the IPO market, i.e. to buy shares in an IPO.)

You're offering to let people know that shares will be available in the secondary markets the day after the IPO is priced and shares are sold (often buying FROM people who bought in the IPO). The distinction here is important because in an IPO that "pops" on the first day of trading, somebody who buys shares on the secondary market in normal trading is not going to be able to buy them at the IPO price. (They may even have a hard time buying them at the opening price in secondary trading...)

jameslk2• 6 years ago

I've been curious what the hypothetical outcome would be if you were to invest the same amount of money in every IPO for the past 30 years and sell at a fixed time 10 years later. Are IPOs underpriced, overpriced, or neither on average over the long term? How does the return compare to investing the same amounts into the S&P 500 or similar benchmarks over the past 30 years?

hendzen• 6 years ago

there is an ETF that does this, at 2 years rather than 10. https://www.renaissancecapital.com/IPO-Investing/US-IPO-ETF. Performance ITD has been worse than SPY until very recently when a lot of tech companies (incl IPOs) have had very strong performance... which is obviously why this thread is even happening.

jameslk2• 6 years ago

Interesting... although 2 years doesn't seem like a meaningful enough time frame to capture real growth, only hype.

snewsum• 6 years ago

I built the same product back in 1998. It worked well during a heightened time of new IPO listings. Not always the case. but I was able to sell it to a hedge fund back then 2 years later. good luck!

vecinu• 6 years ago

Nice idea! I think for people who constantly want to invest in the next big thing, this would come in handy.

As an aside, a good friend of mine warned me that investing at the beginning of an IPO generally is a bad bid. It's better to wait 1-2 years until the hype settles to fairly value a company and that is so true from my own experience with $SNAP, $UBER, $LYFT and $PINS.

philfreo• 6 years ago

I'd suggest putting the information directly on your site (at least the IPOs coming up in the next X days) and charge for the deeper access + email notifications. But that way people have a reason to visit your site even if they haven't decided to pay yet.

haolez• 6 years ago

This is not supposed to be a "Show HN" post, right? I remember that in the guidelines this tag is meant for something that we can see the inner workings and hack with. This is a mere product promotion post.

pospos• 6 years ago

Looks like a scam. No thanks.

swyx• 6 years ago

heads up - you need to offer a free way to try your product or it will be delisted from Show HN. trust me it happened to me.

JMTQp8lwXL• 6 years ago

The economics of IPO investing seem to reward the early private investors at the expense of retail investors. In the current market, I question this as an investment strategy.

"Oh no, I missed the IPO" turns into "well, at least I can buy at a discount" 6 months later. This isn't every company, but it's been an increasing portion as of recent years.

samteeeee• 6 years ago

I recently made something similar, but for movie directors: https://directoralerts.website/

captn3m0• 6 years ago

If you are interested in following SEC filings of companies, I wrote a RSS-bridge against Edgar which takes in tickers and sends a notification every time that companny files something to the SEC.

Code: https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge/pull/1011

If you have a list of tickers, you can generate a OPML feed from here: https://opml.bb8.fun/ (against my rss-bridge server, no uptime guarantees)

HOOVERDAM• 6 years ago

not sure why everyone is trashing this person's service. if you have >250k in your TDA account to gamble on IPOs, think $19 for a notification service on upcoming ones is reasonable. that being said i signed up and when i click on one of the ticker names i get a heroku error, so while the idea is solid just not completely functioning.

edit: working now.

jkaykin7• 6 years ago

Sorry about that, was deploying some updates. Should be working now.

quickthrower22• 6 years ago

Yeah try to fix that from happening in future. You need it to swap not shut down when updating. I will check my Heroku too!

wgriffin13• 6 years ago

Definitely agree with the mission. I believe it should be free though, so we created Today's IPOs: https://todaysipos.com/

We are trying to democratize finance!

Show HN: IPOs.fyi – Missing Out on IPOs Was Frustrating, So I Fixed It

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