Begin the IPO watch for Monetate

Tom Paine

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David Brussin / Monetate 

No one who has followed Conshohocken-based Monetate, the SaaS vendor whose products help retailers and other brands customize their websites to the needs of individual users, and its progress would be surprised to hear that they are thinking about going public. But timing is a key issue. A company has to demonstrate the revenue base, size of market opportunity and credibility (not necessarily immediate profits) to gain investor confidence.

Now CEO David Brussin has said something more definitive about the subject than I've heard him say before. In an interview with the Daily News appearing yesterday, Brussin said, "in a couple of years, we'll be a public company and a lot larger. We want to be here. I can't even imagine this company not being in Philadelphia."

If Monetate is going public within two years (assuming there are no drastic setbacks, or market turbulence, or someone makes an offer they can't refuse) that probably means the thought process and preliminary planning must be moving along.

Brussin also provided another useful piece of information in the Daily News story (credit
Daily News staff writer Michael Hinkelman with getting the story). He said, "a small [Monetate] client might be $75,000 a year. A large client - millions of customers - might be more than $1 million in fees annually". I'm not going to get into a guessing game about Monetate's revenues based on that information, although I am somewhat surprised to learn that it may have million dollar plus clients. Monetate said in a press release early
this year that it more than doubled its client base in 2012 and added over 100 brands
This would imply that it had somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 distinct accounts.
I asked a Monetate representative for an update on this but have yet to receive a response.

At mid-year 2013, Monetate said revenue for the first half of the year increased 127%
over the prior year. It expects to finish 2013 with at least 225 employees, and is offering generous bounties for successful referrals.



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