IPO Best in Show Doesn't Go to WeWork, Uber or Lyft

Many of us have been fixated on WeWork’s struggle to go public and the disastrous post-IPO stock performance of high-profile startups Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc. But as has often been true in the last few years, the tale is different for the unglamorous tech companies that are running circles around their cool peers.

The latest example is Datadog Inc., which helps companies monitor the health of their apps and computing infrastructure; it sold its first batch of public stock late Wednesday. If you fell asleep reading the description, let me wake you up by saying that the company’s most recent pre-IPO investors1 have a nearly 1,100% gain on their shares in less than four years,2according to figures from EquityZen, a marketplace for private stock sales. The earliest Datadog stock buyers from 2011 have a nearly 50,000% gain.