And then there were… six. Over the past three years, we’ve had exactly six direct listings since Spotify pioneered their use in its current form by technology companies. It led to many questions around the what, the why, and the how of direct listings — as well as the differences and tradeoffs between all the different routes to public markets (which I’ve written about previously, including defending the traditional route of the IPO and how to improve it).

While that half-dozen direct listings barely represents 1% of the total capital markets debuts over the same time period, it includes three of the top five opening trade volumes of all time in the history of going public. The members of this direct listings “club” are also all high-profile tech companies, with products used by many consumers today.

So even though it’s a very small sample set, many people — from market watchers to bankers to policymakers to builders trying to figure out which route is best for them — have been watching each of them to try to understand, are direct listings working? What do the data tell us (albeit from a very limited sample)? And what have we learned so far when it comes to direct listings?

Before I share some data via Morgan Stanley and others, and some of my observations here, let’s first quickly summarize what a direct listing is.

And then there were… six. Over the past three years, we’ve had exactly six direct listings since Spotify pioneered their use in its current form by technology companies. It led to many questions around the what, the why, and the how of direct listings — as well as the differences and tradeoffs between all the different routes to public markets (which I’ve written about previously, including defending the traditional route of the IPO and how to improve it).

While that half-dozen direct listings barely represents 1% of the total capital markets debuts over the same time period, it includes three of the top five opening trade volumes of all time in the history of going public. The members of this direct listings “club” are also all high-profile tech companies, with products used by many consumers today.

So even though it’s a very small sample set, many people — from market watchers to bankers to policymakers to builders trying to figure out which route is best for them — have been watching each of them to try to understand, are direct listings working? What do the data tell us (albeit from a very limited sample)? And what have we learned so far when it comes to direct listings?

Before I share some data via Morgan Stanley and others, and some of my observations here, let’s first quickly summarize what a direct listing is.