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Given restrictions placed on communication with prospective investors, retail investor attention can help firms/underwriters with the task of initially valuing an IPO. Using Google search volume to proxy for retail investor attention, we find that the presence of and an increase in retail attention following initial filing but prior to initial pricing are positively related to initial valuations. Our results are robust to alternative matching methods to identify our matched sample of non‐IPO firms and to including several controls for institutional demand. We conclude that retail investor attention plays a critical role in the early stages of IPO valuation.

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The length of time it takes an IPO firm to go public (called "waiting period") reflects multiple layers of scrutiny from underwriters, auditors, venture capitalists, institutional investors, and regulators. Accordingly, we show that the waiting period is a good barometer of ex ante uncertainty about future cash flows and that it has predictive power after the firm goes public. We find that firms marked by short waiting periods experience lower underpricing and less uncertainty and superior stock/operating performance in the aftermarket. We also report that smaller firms are taking longer to go public after Sarbanes-Oxley, thus providing justification for the 2012 JOBS Act.

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