PubMatic IPO Launch
December 9, 2020.
NasdaqListed: PUBM.
Fourteen years in the making.
The goal was to mark PubMatic's listing as the defining brand moment — celebrating the journey, instilling investor confidence, and making sure every single employee, despite being scattered across time zones and home offices at the peak of COVID, felt part of history.
With no trading floor, there was no ringing the bell in person, and of course, no confetti. It’s a tall order to make it feel like the real thing. Challenge: accepted.
Strategy
A virtual IPO with real visual scale
The entire thing — preparation, investor roadshow, opening day ceremony — happened on Zoom. What could have felt anticlimactic didn't, because we made sure it wouldn't.
Roadshow video during lockdown
With no studio and a skeleton crew, the roadshow video had to work hard: clear, credible, and compelling enough to move investors who had never set foot in a PubMatic office. What we pulled off was a fully remote production — shot, directed, and delivered under lockdown conditions — that held up against anything produced in a traditional setting.
The roadshow itself ran six days on Zoom, reaching 140+ investors. The public version extended that reach further, opening the story to the broader investor audience.
The remote creative strategy didn't just work — it set the precedent for PubMatic's digital-first production approach going forward. Sometimes constraints write the playbook.
The Opening Bell
Rajeev Goel, Co-Founder and CEO, rang the Nasdaq Opening Bell remotely alongside the team — streamed live, recorded, and shared internally so no one missed it regardless of time zone.
#ipoday dedicated Slack Channel was the real-time heartbeat of the day. Partner congratulations, media links, tower photos, team reactions pouring in from every global office and time zone — all in one place, all day long.
The Nasdaq Tower moment
The centerpiece: employee photos composited onto the Nasdaq Tower displays in Times Square. Every PubMatic employee's face, on one of the most iconic financial landmarks in the world, on the day the company went public. Employees submitted photos via the Nasdaq app.
For anyone who missed the upload window, I personally jumped in with graphics support to make sure no one got left out.
Every photo, every employee — so everyone could share their moment.
Press blitz
IPO day came with a full press blitz: ~10 interviews in a single day, including Fox Business, TD Ameritrade Network, and AdExchanger — hitting financial, business, and trade media all at once. Marketing coordinated every recording and distribution — It was a lot, but we pulled it off.
Impact
Priced above range: IPO priced at $20/share — 11% above the midpoint of the initial $16–$18 range — raising $118M against a $75M target in the S1.
Strong day-one market performance: Stock hit $28 on opening day. Investor confidence? Very much present.
Every employee got their Times Square moment: Fully remote, fully global — and every single PubMatic employee received a branded Nasdaq Tower photo as a personal memento of the day the company went public. That one mattered.
~10 press hits, day one: Fox Business, TD Ameritrade, AdExchanger, and more — establishing our Co-Founder & CEO Rajeev Goel as an authoritative CEO voice in programmatic and ad tech investing, right out of the gate.
The industry showed up: Criteo, InMobi, The Trade Desk, Taboola, WordPress, JW Player, WeatherBug, Amobee — public congratulations from across the ecosystem. A reflection of where PubMatic stood.
Long-term business validation: Five years later, Rajeev noted that the IPO directly unlocked major agency and advertiser relationships — enabling SPO to grow from 10–15% to ~55% of spend. The moment mattered, and so did what came after.
p.s.
Behind the scenes, the Creative Team was up for 48 hours straight before the bell rang, ensuring every last-minute adjustment, addition, and moving piece was in place. This was 3 months in the making: 18-hour days, 7 days a week for the last month. After the rush was over, the 6th espresso was still buzzing, and sleep was nowhere to be found.
