At his recent annual company meeting, Payam Zamani, founder and chief of Reply, braces himself for the inevitable question. "When are we going to go public?" asks a woman in the back. Zamani, 34, screws up his face—perhaps remembering his misadventures after the last time he went through an initial offering. That was six years ago, with a company called Autoweb, which pioneered the business of selling online sales leads and, briefly, was worth $1 billion on paper before losing 99.6% of its value. That was followed by an online dry-cleaning service called PurpleTie, which crumpled after a year and a half.
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