With the U.S. IPO market much hotter than expected this year, it’s no surprise that more investors are looking for the next big thing, and not all of them are waiting for public announcements.
EquityBee, a company that helps startup employees take advantage of their stock options, just put out an updated list of the most-wanted startups among its community of investors. The pre-IPO “wish list” is based on an internal dashboard where users on the platform mark which companies they’re most interested in purchasing options from.
The top 10 companies as of October 12 are:
- Airbnb: home sharing
- SpaceX: private spaceflight
- Robinhood: investment platform
- Stripe: payments processing
- Impossible Foods: plant-based foods
- Carta: capitalization table management
- Instacart: grocery delivery
- Coinbase: digital currency exchange
- Databricks: software
- Houzz: interior design
Some of these companies, notably Airbnb, are already known to be planning an exit this year. Others have been the subject of recent IPO speculation, including Robinhood and Coinbase.
These lists do not mean a company is expected to float anytime soon, but they can be loosely predictive. EquityBee put out a similar list in July, and three of the companies on it—Snowflake, JFrog, and Palantir—have since gone public.
EquityBee says its platform is used by 5,000 investors, including dedicated funds and high net-worth individuals.