[ketzo]

But that second part is what’s key these days, right? Reducing uncertainty seems big — as I understand it, with an IPO you don’t know exactly how much money you’ll raise until the literal end of day 1, whereas with a SPAC, the specific dollar amount your company raises is worked out through negotiation well in advance of “going public”.

Thank you for the clarification on that first part, though.

[fragmede]

I might be totally misunderstanding the IPO process, but as the company, I sell, say, 100 shares at $10 at 9:00 AM Eastern of the first day. At the end of the trading day at 5:00 pm Eastern, for my balance sheet, it doesn't matter what the share price is, up or down; I've made $1,000 from that initial sale. There are follow-on effects to the company when more shares some time later, but the amount my hypothetical IPO raised is limited to the $1,000 at the start of the day.

[ketzo]

Other places on this thread, there are references to "filling up the IPO book," which is referencing the fact that you can offer 100 shares, but you don't know that all of them will sell, or that all of them will sell for the price you offer them at. That's part of the reason they're often underpriced -- to ensure they all sell.