Two IPOs, 10 Years and a World Apart

SUNNYVALE, Calif. (TheStreet) -- A decade ago, Selina Lo helped guide networking-equipment maker Alteon Web Systems through an initial public offering that raised $76 million. Now, as she prepares for an IPO at Ruckus Wireless, she is reminded of how easy things were during the dot-com days.

"The Alteon days were the Champagne days," says Lo, chief executive officer of Ruckus, a venture-backed WiFi-technology company started in 2004 in Sunnyvale, Calif. "Back then, if you knew how to spell the word 'spell,' you could take a company public." (You could sell it, too. Less than a year after the 1999 IPO, Alteon was acquired by Nortel(NRTLQ Quote) for $7.8 billion.)

That was then. "Now we're back to the basics," Lo says.

Ruckus Wireless CEO Selina Lo is preparing to take her company public.

In 1999, a year before the dot-com crash, 541 companies filed for initial share sales, priced at $85.7 billion, with the majority trading higher by the end of the year. That compares with 50 IPOs in 2008, priced at $30.6 billion. Only 14% of IPO filings in 2008 were ever priced, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The first quarter of 2009 saw two IPOs. The window seems to be opening, with 19 companies going public so far in the current quarter.

Still, going public is hardly the bubble-wrapped cakewalk of yesteryear. "You have to face the consequences, like standing up every quarter and reporting what you've done," Lo says. But beyond a future of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, a company like Ruckus has to worry about wowing public investors with valuation, reputation and prospects from the get-go.