Today is the milestone moment for Manju and I as well as a special constellation of our close friends who shared my conviction that Udemy was destined to morph into the world’s pre-eminent EdTech marketplace. These were the same special friends/investors who entrusted us to invest $17.5 million in a syndicate we led to buy Udemy shares in the pre-IPO market at a valuation of 3.3 billion in November 2020.
Eleven months have passed since we closed our syndicate and Udemy has just filed its S1 with the SEC for an IPO and will trade in Nasdaq under the symbol UDMY. The investment bankers who will co-lead the syndicate for the IPO are J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley. Sadly, this means the average investor who aspires to invest in this IPO has almost zero chance of an allocation at the projected valuation range of $6 to $8 billion.
This is sad for me as I had analyzed the future Udemy IPO more than a year ago and projected that I hope to triple the value of my investor syndicate. A senior partner at the venture capital firm in Silicon Valley who is also a strategic investor in Udemy and with whom I shared my analysis when I was organizing my syndicate believes that our post IPO exit valuation will be at the $9 to $10 billion range. Inshallah, this will come to pass in the next six months and I know for a fact that Manju and I are eagerly awaited for a celebratory party by certain very close, very special friends in the Dutch/French island of St. Martin.
Walt Disney has a fairy-tale theme in Anaheim Disneyland titled “pirate of the Caribbean”, I would like to have my own special Matty land monument dedicated to Sindhis of the Caribbean LoL. Gentlemen, you are an entrepreneurial inspiration to me and the most brilliant financial minds I know in the global NRI diaspora. It will be pure heaven to continue our journey of adventure and obscene money making in the Silicon Valley pre-IPO deal business.
Udemy is only the tip of the iceberg. We have done so many other deals together but Manju has forced me to keep strict radio silence on any of our pending deals until a specific company files for an IPO with the SEC as another major software AI platform will be doing in this winter of destiny. I have shared my intellectual capital for free in my life and given literally hundreds of ideas on the stock market that doubled or even tripled in value, though I had my share of flops that bombed as well. Such is life in the financial markets.
Yet I have gained so much from friends I met via my media columns, online rants and LinkedIn, the only thing I can promise all of you is that nothing pleases me more than to make money for my friends. Those who want to invest in UDMY when it is a public company after the IPO should read the enclosed Reuters article. It will not be appropriate for Manju and I to comment on Udemy again before the IPO.
Reuters article: https://www.reuters.com/article/udemy-ipo/update-1-online-learning-platform-udemy-files-for-u-s-ipo-idUSL4N2R121Y
Matein Khalid is Chief Investment Officer at Asas Capital
