I asked 18x Midas Lister Navin Chaddha what it was like IPOing the last company before the Dot Com Bubble popped:
"My second company, iBeam, went public in May 2000, the last IPO before the dot-com crash. We built a distributed internet for video, pushing content through satellite to the edge so it was served close to the user.
We grew from zero to $100 million in revenue and went public nine months from launch.
Then we went from blitzscaling to blitz-failing. Our customers were dot-coms. They all disappeared.
In six months we went from $100 million in revenue to $20 or $30 million, and from a $3 billion market cap to $300 million. We ended up getting acquired. It was a two-year journey.
That's where I learned company building is a marathon, not a sprint. If it takes nine months or five years, just be patient."
Full conversation: