Rapidly Evolving Technologies and Startup Exits

The authors thank Sunil Muralidhara and Lauren Phillips for excellent research assistance; Jay Ritter for on sales data for IPO firms; Nick Bloom, Francesco D’Acunto, Francois Degeorge, Francois Derrien, Michael Ewans, Joan Farre-Mensa, Francesco Franzoni, Jack He, Sabrina Howell, Mark Lang, Josh Lerner, Michelle Lowry, Song Ma, Adrien Matray, Dimitris Papanikolaou, Shawn Thomas, Xuan Tian, and participants at American University, Arizona State Univesity, Babson, Bocconi University, Boston College, Dauphine University, the Centre for Corporate Finance conference in Bergen, the Conference on Emerging Technologies in Accounting and Financial Economics conference at the University of Southern California, the FinTech Conference at Georgia State University, the Financial Research Association conference in Las Vegas, Lehigh University, the Midwest Finance Association meeting in Chicago, the National Bureau of Economic Research meeting on Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship, Georgetown University, HEC Paris, Johns Hopkins University, San Diego University, the Swiss Finance Institute Research days, Stockholm School of Economics, Universita Cattolica, University of Virginia, Texas Christian University, Toulouse School of Economics, Tsinghua University, Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, the University of British Columbia Winter Conference in Whistler, the Universita della Svizzera Italiana (Lugano), the University of Maryland, the University of Zurich, the Western Finance Association meeting in Huntington Beach, and Virginia Tech for helpful comments. This paper builds on parts of a previous version titled “Technological Disruptive Potential and the Evolution of IPO and Sell-outs.” All errors are the authors’ alone.