Most founders I meet think IPO preparation takes six months. Then they wonder why it takes three years. Here's the honest shape of the 18-month listing journey, and what eats time when you're not looking.

TL;DR

  • We invest first. Once we’ve put capital behind a founder, the 18-month listing path activates across five phases: underwrite, restructure, audit & document, submit & roadshow, list & stabilise.
  • The phase founders most want to skip, underwrite, is the one that decides everything that follows.
  • Where founders quietly lose 6–12 months: starting the audit before the restructure is finished, using a non-PCAOB firm, leaving committees on paper.
  • Eighteen months is long. But it’s a known calendar run by people who’ve run it before, the cheapest path to the bell.

When a founder first asks me what it takes to list a company, the answer they want to hear is “six months, eighteen if there are complications.” The honest answer is: eighteen months if you do it right, three years if you don’t.

I’ve been on every side of that timeline. I’ve sat through the audit cycles, drafted the prospectuses, fielded the underwriter questions, and stood on the floor when the bell rang. I’ve also watched founders burn two years trying to compress a journey that didn’t need to be compressed. It needed to be structured.

A note on what this is. Robinhood doesn’t run listings for fees. We invest first, and once we’ve put capital into a company, the 18-month path is what we activate alongside the founder. Here’s the calendar, broken into the five phases we run on every company we back.

Months 0–2 · Underwrite

Before we commit capital we underwrite the company against the target exchange: Bursa LEAP, ACE, Main; Nasdaq; NYSE. Each has a different bar. If governance can pass on ACE but not on Nasdaq, that’s a strategic decision, not a paperwork problem. We tell the founder what we see. Sometimes the answer is “not yet: here’s the 12-month list before we’d invest.” We say no at this gate more often than we say yes. The capital follows conviction.

Months 2–6 · Restructure

Holding-co setup. Ownership realignment. Board recomposition. Committee charters. The corporate plumbing. Most founders dread this phase because it feels administrative. It isn’t. It’s where you decide who controls what after the listing, and whether the structure can carry the company for the next ten years. Get this wrong and the audit phase becomes a renovation project on top of a build.

Months 6–14 · Audit & Document

The longest phase. Two-year PCAOB audit cycle if you’re going to the US. Prospectus, S-1 / F-1 drafting, due-diligence files, internal-control framework. The reason this phase is eight months, not three, is that every finding in the audit triggers a response in the prospectus and a fix in the financial reporting calendar. Compressing the audit doesn’t speed the listing. It just guarantees the rework happens later, in front of the regulator.

Months 14–17 · Submit & Roadshow

SEC submission, regulatory back-and-forth, exchange application, investor education, pricing strategy. This is the phase that feels like the IPO. It’s also the phase most fragile to anything weak in phases 2 and 3. If the audit is clean and the prospectus is honest, this is mostly about telling the story and timing the market. If either is shaky, you’ll spend this phase fixing what should have been fixed earlier.

Months 17–18+ · List & Stabilise

Pricing. Allocation. Bell. Then the part most advisors disengage on: lock-up management, the first quarterly cycle as a public company, the post-IPO governance calendar. We don’t disengage at listing day. The post-listing year is when fortunes are won or lost, and it’s where most regional advisors check out.

Where founders lose 6 to 12 months without noticing

Three places, almost every time. One: they start the audit before the restructure is finished, and end up auditing a moving structure. Two: they use an audit firm that isn’t PCAOB-registered, then discover the workpapers don’t qualify and have to re-do the cycle. Three: they leave governance committees on paper, never operationalised, and the regulator picks it up in the response cycle.

None of these are talent problems. They’re sequencing problems. The whole reason we underwrite before we commit is to catch them at the underwrite phase, when fixing them costs weeks. Not at the audit phase, when fixing them costs quarters.

Eighteen months is a long time. But it’s a known time, and a known calendar, run by people who have run it before, is the cheapest path to the bell. Strike it with purpose. Strike it with pride.