Despite the setback the stock market felt mid-March, there was a large number of companies that went public this year. Last year’s numbers rounded off at around 110 IPO’s whereas this year we have hit 129. Not only that, but PitchBook, a financial software service, estimates the total being around $252 billion. This far exceeds the previous year record high, which was during the height of the dot-com boom in 1999, according to Dealogic’s data. Many believe that the reason so many private companies ended up going public this year was due to the passing of the first stimulus bill, allowing companies to have faith in the economy coming back to life again.

Airbnb was one of the initial companies that was hit really hard, not just in America, but internationally as well. They had to lay off 25% of their staff and cut their executive’s salaries. The company’s CEOs know about hard ship having been rejected by multiple investors at 3 different conventions during the start of their careers. They switched their marketing to push for closer ‘staycations’ of destinations that you could reach on one tank of gas and saw their numbers start ticking back up. Initially, Airbnb’s stock was going to be set around $40-$50 apiece, but with the rise of local travel, they decided to raise it.

The founders of Airbnb have come a long way in just 12 years. They started out as means to an end. The 3 founders: Brian Chesky, Nathan Blecharczky, and Joe Gebbia, were short on money and needed to find a way to make rent. They came up with the idea of turning their loft into a bed in breakfast by renting out an air mattress in their house. They now offer short term housing to millions of customers globally. The company just went public on Thursday, December 9th and listed their stock at $68 per share, for a valuation of $47 billion.

Airbnb and Doordash were able to break into the tech heavy top 25 list for Initial Public Offerings, IPOs, of 2020. The largest tech company going public was Snowflake, a data cloud platform, at $30 billion. It is expected for this trend of hot IPOs to hold through the first half of 2021, but with the passing of a bill to send out a second round of stimulus checks currently being at an impasse at Capitol Hill, that might shake the confidence some companies have in the change of the economy.