With Facebook filing to go public last week, I've been remembering a lot about what it was like to work in the IPO market in the early 90's. For those who don't know, I worked for a firm that was a dominant player in the IPO market at the time (ranked #2 in the US in 1993 by USA Today for an average 53% return on our IPO's). You would think that having a hot hand in the IPO market would make your life easier, and in many ways it does, but it's not all rainbows and puppies.
I was actually lured to this firm from the firm I started at with the promise of access to the new firms IPO's. The pitch went something like this: "Eddie, you're busting your ass over there for no money, and for what? The firm brings, what, three or four companies a year? We've got 20 on the schedule this year. Do you know how easy it is to make money when you've got a hot IPO every month?" I bought it hook, line, and sinker.
I'm here to tell you - if it's your job to sell IPO shares, your work life can be a nightmare. How can that be, you ask, when people are knocking each other over to buy shares of Facebook? Well, that's how. No matter how you divvy up your personal allocation, you're gonna have customers who are pissed at you. Either they didn't get any, or they didn't get as much as they wanted, you can bet your ass that your phone is going to be blowing up both before the deal and after.
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