Everybody knows that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Raising money on the market costs money; but how much? As usual, the answer is: it depends.

According to Fusion-io’s (FIO) S-1 prospectus, they estimated that it would cost them $1.2M to raise $120M for their IPO. Similarly, HomeAway (AWAY) estimated that their cost for raising $140.7M was $3.5M. Simple math gives us a figure of about 1-2% for estimated costs, as a percentage of expected amount raised — and that only includes the direct costs. Continue reading →