
Show HN: IPOs.fyi – Missing Out on IPOs Was Frustrating, So I Fixed It - jkaykin
https://ipos.fyi
======
wavepruner
IPO calendar for NYSE: [https://www.nyse.com/ipo-
center/filings](https://www.nyse.com/ipo-center/filings)

IPO calendar for NASDAQ: [https://www.nasdaq.com/market-
activity/ipos](https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/ipos)

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

Anyone know if CBOE publishes an IPO calendar?

~~~
motoxpro
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
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...

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jonnycat
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
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.

~~~
nicoburns
> 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.

~~~
murgindrag
Half corruption, but the surface argument is:

Companies want stability. If my plan is to raise $2 billion with an IPO, I
want to be able to build a business knowing that money is coming in. With an
auction, I wouldn't know how much money will come in. It might be $4 billion,
or it might be $500 million.

The current structure has a financial intermediary who charges a premium to
take the risk of a price DROP for me. I can shop around for who will give me
the best price, and once I've got that locked in, I know my $2 billion will
come in, and I can start building my engineering, marketing, etc. with the
stability of a guaranteed check in the bank.

That stability is worth more than the premium.

~~~
timcalhoun
It can't be difficult to design an auction where the amount of $$ raised is
set, with the "price" being the valuation (ie. what % of the company the
investors are willing to own).

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sokoloff
That’s basically how Treasuries are auctioned. The problem for an individual
company is I might be interested to IPO only under certain terms and be
willing to pay a middleman to arrange that for the certainty. (The Treasury
auction isn’t likely to move much and when it does, well, that’s the price-the
government needs the cash to run; that’s not quite the same as a company who
has other possibly viable options, including waiting.)

[0] -
[https://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/research/indepth/res_au...](https://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/research/indepth/res_auctions_indepth.htm)

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jkaykin
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!

~~~
lefstathiou
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.

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

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jzig
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!

~~~
jkaykin
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

~~~
mellosouls
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._

~~~
jkaykin
I appreciate this, I thought I was following the rules but it's possible I am
not. I messed up with not having at least some kind of free tier, though I did
add a email sign up to send to people when I do build it. Thanks for the heads
up!

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pedant888
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...)

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snewsum
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!

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pkhamre
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 :)

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

~~~
bgs264
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.

~~~
rabidonrails
I think this is an interesting approach.

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wgriffin13
Definitely agree with the mission. I believe it should be free though, so we
created Today's IPOs: [https://todaysipos.com/](https://todaysipos.com/)

We are trying to democratize finance!

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philfreo
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.

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JMTQp8lwXL
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.

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vecinu
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.

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captn3m0
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](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/](https://opml.bb8.fun/) (against my rss-bridge server,
no uptime guarantees)

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haolez
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.

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jameslk
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
there is an ETF that does this, at 2 years rather than 10.
[https://www.renaissancecapital.com/IPO-Investing/US-IPO-
ETF](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.

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

~~~
quickthrower2
Which is the strategy no doubt!

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samteeeee
I recently made something similar, but for movie directors:
[https://directoralerts.website/](https://directoralerts.website/)

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HOOVERDAM
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.

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

~~~
quickthrower2
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!

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swyx
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.

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cvhashim
This is an awesome idea, good luck

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pospos
Looks like a scam. No thanks.

