A lot has been written about how Google initial public offering is supposed to revive the moribund fortunes of Silicon Valley. I thought too much was being made of the Google IPO. I checked in with Tom Taulli who is somewhat of a guru on the whole IPO game, and wanted to get his opinion. In an email he wrote back:

bq. IPOs are always about lag times. It takes a while to draft the S-1 and prep a company to go public. These filings we are seeing right now were likely started when the markets were red hot. Also, keep in mind that — because of the new regs — the IPO process is getting longer. Bankers certainly would like to see a Google IPO but this is not a requirement. so long as we can get back to some stability — after the recent correction — I think the IPO market for tech (and Silicon Valley deals in particular) will be promising.

Many companies have filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission their intentions (read: S-1) to raise money from the equity markets. These include Salesforce.com, Motive Communications, Brightmail and more recently Seven Networks.

bq. Some of the filings are very interesting: Seven, for example, looks like a throw-back to the dot-com days. Then again, Brightmail looks like it has a lot of potential (and is even profitable). They are definitely a quality product for the IPO market.

I personally like Motive Communications which has become a one-stop shop for providing back office software to broadband service providers of all kinds. They make the software for “self provisioning” and have helped cut the truck roll costs drastically for both DSL and Cable guys.