After three sluggish years in the IPO market, the rising cost of capital paired with recent stock market performance has resulted in a resurgence of IPOs. But for finance chiefs hoping to join that wave, the path forward likely isn’t about perfect timing. Rather, it’s about precision and performance.
“This is all about, do you have great numbers? If you have the metrics… the market is open,” said Dean Quiambao, chief relationship builder, partner and Northern California Market leader at accounting, consulting and technology firm Armanino, and a trusted adviser to pre-IPO CFOs.
After predicting the IPO market would have the upturn it’s seeing now, Quiambao still says metrics alone aren’t enough. “A Taylor Swift-style ‘Love Story’ is not good enough anymore,” he said. “These companies better have a growth story.”
Turning metrics into action
According to Quiambao, headline metrics are only the start to a successful offering. He affirmed investors want proof of revenue quality, customer retention and legitimate product or offering expansion capabilities. “To use Sigma Computing as an example, [more than half] of customers use two or more products,” he noted. “That feels good.” He also cited Sigma’s Rule of 40 score, saying it’s at 63, as the kind of performance that catches institutional investor attention. “[I believe] that one’s gonna go,” he said. “Watch out.”
Once metrics like these are achieved, Quiambao said it’s the CFO’s job to not only present them, but to strategically embed them across the organization. “The best companies control the KPIs that matter most to them,” he said. “They go to market saying, ‘These are the 10 or 11 [KPIs] we track. Take a look [at] how we track them quarter after quarter.’”
Quiambao said the most effective CFOs can turn those KPIs into shared accountability. “They’ve built a sense of responsibility across the company,” he said. “People feel like that’s our metric. Those team members know how they can personally take ownership of the data.”
With this in mind, there’s an important distinction to be made that confidence in current performance is less important than the ability to forecast. “I’ve personally met CFOs and finance teams who’ve told me, ‘The only thing stopping us from going public is our forecastability of [quarter over quarter] revenue and sales,’” he said. “They say, ‘We know the deal is going to come in, but we just don’t know what quarter it’s going to come in.’”
That kind of variability in forecasting, he explained, can disqualify otherwise strong companies. “If you’re going to go public right now, you better hit your first couple of quarters,” he said. “That’s imperative.”
Balancing growth aspirations with IPO pricing
While investors want growth, they also expect to see scalable operations and profit leverage. Quiambao said the ability to show how automation improves margins is now also a must. He explained how Chime, the mobile banking fintech that had its IPO early last month, is a good example of this.
“Chime has become known for implementing technology to the point where a large majority of their customer interactions don’t [involve] people,” he said. “They build systems, processes and technology, and that’s driving down cost and increasing efficiency.”
But even when the fundamentals, forecasting and execution are all there, pricing the IPO appropriately remains critical. “Don’t be greedy,” Quiambao said. “There have been companies recently that went out a little greedy, and they were just flat.”
He cited CoreWeave’s recent IPO as a case study in smart valuation. “They went out at a decreased valuation than what was reported in the past, and then they had some results, and then they had some quarter by quarter. And now? Look at them. They’re on a solid trajectory.”
Quoting a conversation he had with a leader at NASDAQ Capital Markets in New York, Quiambao said pricing strategy is critical to earning investor dollars on the onset. “[The NASDAQ leader] said, ‘I got $20 trillion within eight blocks up here, and they all want to buy tech,’” Quiambao explained. “But he made an important distinction: they’ve got to go out at the right price.”
For some companies, that means going public at a reduced valuation. “Are you willing to go out at a price that might be less than your last stated valuation, and then go earn it back?” Quiambao said. “Well-prepared finance teams will earn that valuation back if they do it right.”
Private equity’s influence
For the growing number of CFOs who are working at private equity-backed companies, preparing to go public comes with added layers of complexity. Quiambao said those deals often require navigating capital structures that weren’t designed with public markets in mind.
“Private equity wants to move fast, but the CFO needs to be sure that the process is done correctly. A flat IPO is never good, but one under private equity or after a private equity exit can result in additional challenges for leadership across the organization.”
Dean Quiambao
Partner, Northern California market leader, Armanino
“You’ve got time constraints, carry structures, rollover equity, maybe some debt limitations,” he said. “And sometimes the CFO’s job becomes, how do we untangle all that and still tell a clean, compelling story to public investors?”
In these scenarios, finance leaders are balancing the expectations of their PE sponsors with the type of rigor demanded by public markets. That includes aligning short-term performance with long-term investor confidence, while also making sure legacy deal structures don’t create any extra friction between leaders during the IPO process.
Quiambao said successful PE-backed CFOs tend to treat readiness as a full-time discipline, not a transactional push. “They’re modeling out scenarios early, managing tax exposure and thinking about how to structure equity in a way that holds up under public scrutiny,” he said. “And they’re doing it all on a compressed timeline.”
He said a flat IPO in this scenario can be detrimental. “Private equity wants to move fast, but the CFO needs to be sure that the process is done correctly. A flat IPO is never good, but one under private equity or after a private equity exit can result in additional challenges for leadership across the organization.”
A Bay Area bounce back?
While other cities have drawn headlines for innovation and tech talent, Quiambao said the Bay Area is quietly regaining its position as a hub for AI and IPO-stage companies. Other areas, like Texas and Miami, have claimed their cities as the next technology and finance hubs too, but Quiambao says San Francisco’s role in that is growing rapidly right now.
“People might not want to believe it, but the Bay Area is coming back,” he said. “We are becoming the home of AI.”
He described a new concentration of venture firms, founders and startups around the Mission Bay neighborhood, where OpenAI’s headquarters sit across from the Golden State Warriors’ arena. “There are always important people walking around, there’s always security everywhere,” he said. “It’s like the AI corner right there. You want to meet an AI person? Just hang out there for a bit. The buzz around here is real.”
He also said he sees founders reversing course on the trend of a mass exodus of business, finance and technology professionals from California that has occurred in recent years. “I met a CEO during New York Tech Week, and he told me he is moving from New York to San Francisco,” Quiambao said. “His competitor is here. His VCs are here. The AI scene is here. He said, ‘I have to move where the action is happening.’”
