Sequans is a wireless chip company which went public last month. This is a rare enough event to be worth a post. All the more as the start-up is French and it went public on the New York stock exchange. It may not look like a great IPO but for a non-US company, it is a real achievement (there had been Ilog, Business Objects and a few other French start-ups). What is also interesting is that it did not have US VCs and the company was founded in 2003, less than 8 years to go public.

What else worth commenting?
– the company had raised more than €50M prior to IPO and $66M at IPO.
– the founding team had experience with another US company (Juniper)
– VCs come from France (i-source, SGAM) and the UK (Add Partners, Kennet). Later on, it added strategic investors (Swisscom, Alcatel, Motorola).
– All shareholders sold a little piece of their stake (about 3-5%)