The Next Wave of Tech IPOs

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It has been more than a decade since the jagged tooth of a peak rose from the Nasdaq and topped out at 5,409. The tech-heavy index hasn't approached those heights since, but a spate of possible initial public offerings of companies such as Groupon and Facebook raises the possibility of a second dot-com boom—and bust. For founders and backers, the prospect of a fat payday beckons. For investors, whether institutional or private, a different outcome may lurk. The frothy valuations surrounding these and other companies, such as Hulu and Zynga, have only increased, thanks to the ease of buying pre-IPO shares through secondary markets such as SharesPost, SecondMarket, and Nyppex. SharesPost now values Facebook at $78.8 billion. In comparison, eBay's (EBAY) market capitalization is $42.3 billion and Amazon's (AMZN) $93.94 billion, as of July 1. The possible tech bubble is also being fueled as companies stay private longer and in some cases, these companies may bypass IPOs altogether, as detailed in a February Bloomberg Businessweek.com story. China is also getting in on the game. In the IPO pipeline are online video company Tudou and possibly e-commerce site Taobao. Memories of tech disasters such as Pets.com and Broadcast.com haunt the market and investors don't want to get fooled again. The new batch of tech IPOs could be different, though. Most of these companies already have real customers and real revenue.

Click here to see the biggest tech IPOs of 2011.