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ARTICLE · 22 OCTOBER 2026

Ready For Anything: Open For Whom?

Foley & Lardner LLP
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After years of waiting for the IPO window to reopen, a panel of CFOs, bankers, and investors gathered in San Francisco to discuss what has actually changed since 2021. The uncomfortable truth emerged: while headline numbers suggest a record year for IPO proceeds, the window remains open only for mega-listings, leaving middle-market companies still waiting on the sidelines.

United StatesFinance and Banking
Louis Lehot
Louis Lehot
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The window is open. The question Tuesday night was whether it is open for you.

The room 

On Tuesday night, in the middle of San Francisco Tech Week, a full room of CFOs, founders, investors and bankers rode up to the 19th floor of One Market Plaza for a conversation with no slides, no pitches and no record. The premise was the title. IPO windows open and close within weeks, the SPAC market has been reborn with a rulebook, and growth companies have to be ready for several outcomes at once. 

The one ask of the panel beforehand was to be as candid about what is not working as about what is. They were. The evening ran under the Chatham House Rule, so what follows is the direction of the conversation rather than a transcript, and the few lines in quotation marks are my own recap, not anyone’s words from the stage. 

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