[soldergenie]

It is actually quite common in Canada for small companies to IPO with total market caps of just tens of millions of dollars. Canada doesn't have nearly as many private company investors as the USA, so companies (especially resource based companies) just go public when they are small in order to raise money.

All these small company IPOs are on a separate exchange (the TSX Venture exchange), and if the company gets big enough, they 'graduate' to the main exchange. This works because the regulatory overhead of being public is a lot less in Canada on the TSX Venture exchange - No Sarbanes Oxley!

London has something similar with the AIM.

I think it is a better system than the US model, because it allows anyone to invest in the small companies, not just venture capitalists or people who participate in specialist schemes to buy private company shares.

[ditonal]

But in fact they are IPOing on the NYSE using the new regulation that just changed:

http://ww2.cfo.com/regulation/2015/03/sec-approves-new-rules...

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1594805/000119312515...

"We qualify as an “emerging growth company” pursuant to the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012, or the JOBS Act. An emerging growth company may take advantage of specified exemptions from various requirements that are otherwise applicable generally to public companies in the United States. These provisions include:"

And yes the advantage is that you open up emerging companies to retail investors. The problem is the tech industry's history with small companies and retail investors is not so great, I would say the danger outweights the benefits.