Renaissance Capital counts IPOs by its own footnote

The record

Renaissance Capital, an IPO-focused investment adviser, publishes an annual review of United States IPO activity. Its 2024 US IPO Market Annual Review, dated 2 January 2025, reports that "the US IPO market continued to rebuild in 2024, closing out the year with 150 IPOs raising $29.6 billion," a more than 50% increase in proceeds over the prior year even though deal count stayed below historical averages. The review states its counted universe in a chart footnote: data "includes IPOs and direct listings with a market cap of at least $50mm and excludes closed-end funds and SPACs." Within that count, the review notes "VC-backed tech picked up somewhat," citing gains from newly public names such as Reddit as a signal for the venture-backed segment, without giving a separate venture-backed count.

What the sources establish

Renaissance Capital's own review sets its scope in a single footnote, the kind of definitional detail that determines whether its count can be compared to any other tally. A $50 million market-cap floor and the exclusion of closed-end funds and SPACs are Renaissance Capital's choices, not a market-wide convention; a venture-data provider counting exits by IPO over the same year very likely uses a different floor and a different definition of venture-backed. The firm's separate description of its Renaissance IPO Index confirms its index runs on yet a third rule set: "Qualified IPOs are added to the indexes on a quarterly basis and removed approximately three years after their first trading day." The review's IPO count, the index's constituents, and any venture database's exit count are three separately defined universes, even where they overlap in practice.

Scope and revision

The 2024 review is Renaissance Capital's own document for that calendar year and sits alongside the firm's other periodic products, including quarterly reviews and the index pages, each with a different counting rule and update cadence. As retrieved on 16 September 2026, the 2024 edition is no longer linked from the firm's current statistics page, which now features the 2025 annual review and a Q2 2026 quarterly review instead; this trace located the 2024 document directly by its file path.

The decision in front of you

A founder or analyst citing a Renaissance Capital IPO count alongside a venture-data provider's exit count should state both providers' size and inclusion thresholds rather than presenting the two as one combined figure; this is an editorial practice, not an instruction from either source. Checking which specific report edition a number comes from also matters, since Renaissance Capital revises and republishes its statistics as each year closes.

• Does the IPO count being cited include or exclude SPACs and direct listings the way Renaissance Capital's own footnote specifies?
• Is 'venture-backed' being defined the same way by Renaissance Capital and by any venture database cited alongside it?
• Is the cited figure from the most current edition of the review, or a since-superseded one?

An IPO count is only as comparable as its footnote, and Renaissance Capital's own footnote is short enough to read before quoting the number above it.