The following video excerpt was taken from an interview with Robert LoCascio, founder and CEO of LivePerson (LPSN 2.10%), as he talks about what was behind the company's incredible success story. In this segment, he discusses how his company survived the bursting of the dot-com bubble burst.
A transcript follows the video.
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Brendan Byrnes: You went public essentially at the worst time a company could have possibly gone public, right in the middle of the bubble bursting. Talk about what that was like, and how did LivePerson get through it? There was a point in time where a lot of people thought you weren't going to get through it.
Robert LoCascio: Yes, there were about 20, I think 20 companies priced that week to go public, and only 10 of us went public. And I remember on Friday, when we priced the deal, basically the underwriters were like, "Look, if you don't take it, we have to cut the deal in half, then you won't go public on Monday; there will be no more IPOs." And so it was an amazing experience, because the market was up and down. We'd go visit fund managers, and they'd be, like, staring at the TV, watching the Nasdaq crater, and they're looking at us and persevered. I remember being at the end of the road show and just thinking, "We have to do this. We have to just focus. We've got to make it out the door." And we were a lucky one of the few to make it out and survive.
