IPOs are “demanding” but “exhilarating,” says veteran CFO
With 2026 set to be an important year for IPOs, including the potential debuts of AI giants like OpenAI and Anthropic, we wanted a veteran’s take on the experience of steering a company through going public.
Bill Zerella has shepherded three companies through new public listings. He’s currently the CFO of ACV Auctions, a vehicle auction platform he helped take public in 2021. Fitbit and healthcare communication platform Vocera were the first two.
CFO Brew talked with Zerella to get his vantage point on the challenges of preparing for an IPO and the current conditions for companies getting ready to hit the markets.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
With your experience of taking companies public, what are you seeing in the IPO market now?
The bar keeps getting raised in terms of bringing companies to the public markets…There were some very successful IPOs last year. A lot of the bankers that I talked to expect this year to be a pretty good year for IPOs. There are a lot of companies that have grown to be pretty large as private companies, because the private equity markets are incredibly deep today versus 20 years ago. So companies have a lot of options other than just going public these days, in terms of getting liquidity and raising capital. So I think we’ll start to see things improve this year for IPOs versus the last few years.
Have you ever reconsidered the decision to go public? Would you choose a different avenue?
At the time when [ACV Auctions] went public, if you remember back then, SPACs were kind of all the rage. And when I joined the company, the question was, should we go public via SPAC or traditional IPO? I never even considered a SPAC, and there’s a few reasons for that…I’m of the firm belief that companies that are really attractive to investors would go public via a traditional IPO. An IPO is a marketing event as much as it is a financing event. You get a lot of PR as a result of becoming a public company, especially if you’re a consumer brand.
For ACV, I wouldn’t do anything differently. We had a very, very successful IPO, and we raised a lot of capital. It was the right thing to do at the time. And I don’t look back and question that decision.
How did you manage the day to day of running the company while preparing for the IPO?
That’s something you learn through experience, having done this multiple times. I’ve been very focused on hyper growth technology businesses…the reality is it’s hard to do, because you’re managing a business at the same time that you’re typically building out human resources, processes, controls, financial reporting, governance structures. You’re doing a lot of things simultaneously. So it’s hard work. It’s not in the normal course of just operating a business. But the good news is it’s a major event. Once you get past that event, then you’re just operating like every other public company.
What advice would you have for CFOs who are going through an IPO?
Just be prepared that you’re going to be working pretty long hours. It’s demanding, but it can be exhilarating if you’re part of an exciting company that’s growing fast. Bringing a company to the public markets is a bit of a rite of passage for CFOs.
What was your most exciting IPO?
I would say Fitbit probably qualifies. It was the largest consumer tech IPO in history at the time. This was in 2015, just over 10 years ago. It was as much of a marketing event as anything. We had over 100 people on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. And we definitely rang the bell, which was my second time. The New York Stock Exchange is an iconic institution…that was very exciting, because we literally had a platform outside the New York Stock Exchange with exercises being done, and a huge crowd.
