How To Make The Most Of Your IPO: The Road Show

Net.Genesis, which provides software and services to analyze behavior patterns of online buyers, went public in February. Shares were offered at $18 and rose to $55 the first day. Follow his experiences from Day One of the net.Genesis road show. You're sure to learn something about how to handle your own. --Editor

Yesterday's pitch to H&Q, our underwriting bank, went great. It's clear they are very engaged with us as a high profile IPO. We had lots of questions, lots of good insight into our business. I got feedback from our lead analyst, Jim Pickrel that the west coast folks who saw the pitch really liked the story and the space. He expects them to start talking to their clients tomorrow.

Today's pitch to Piper Jaffrey, our secondary underwriter, went great as well. There was a full audience; they are very enthusiastic to be representing us. Some of the questions at the end:

-privacy: how do you see this affecting your business; what stance do you take? (answer: we don't own the customer data; our customer do; we're involved and are leading CPEX.

-Consolidation: in a world where the strong eat the weak, where will you play, what might you acquire. Answer: we're going deep in web analytics; may buy service companies. Not sure on moving into other product lines.

-Biggest challenges: recruitment, scaling the business, meeting the scalability challenge. Piper sees this as a great deal; there is no question in their minds that their customers will get it and be enthusiastic. More tomorrow after taking directly to the investors.