ZipRecruiter goes public: what to know about ZIP’s direct listing on the NYSE

ZipRecruiter is going public on the stock market today. But instead of going the route of a traditional IPO, ZipRecruiter will debut on the New York Stock Exchange as a direct listing, which means its current shareholders, not the company itself, are selling its shares. Here’s what you need to know about ZipRecruiter’s direct listing:

What is ZipRecruiter? It’s an online job marketplace founded in 2010. The platform boasts that over 1 million employers have used it to hire, and 10,000 new companies subscribe to it every month.
How is a direct listing different than an IPO? In an IPO the company itself is selling its shares to investors. In a direct listing, the company’s employees and current investors sell their own shares to investors.
What is the starting price of the stock? There is none because a direct listing doesn’t use a bank as an underwriter that prices the initial shares. Instead, the stock exchange applies a reference price to the shares, but this reference price is just advisory. ZIPs reference price is $18, according to Barron’s.
How many ZIP shares are there? There are 133.1 million shares in total—both Class A and Class B. Of that total, the direct listing will see 86,598,896 Class A shares go on sale.
What is ZIP’s market cap? With a reference price of $18 per share and 133.1 million shares available, ZipRecruiter is estimated to be worth around $2.4 billion.
Have other companies used direct listings? Yes. Coinbase, Slack, Spotify, Roblox, and Palantir have all gone public via direct listings.