> And as of Friday, at least 11 of 49 venture-capital-backed U.S. technology companies with IPOs since the start of 2014 traded below the per-share value where they last raised money as a private company, an analysis of stock-sale documents by The Wall Street Journal shows.<p>Here's why I think this matters. Previously tech companies, Microsoft being the prime example, paid employee's a fair market wage but then gave options or restricted stock as well. The rising stock price acted as a sort of bonus to employee's.<p>With companies now spending more time private and getting more of their gains as private companies, what's happening is that private equity and vc companies are now capturing more of those gains that the public would.<p>Employee's are also the one's holding the bag here. With their lockout periods after going public they are the most exposed to busted IPO's.<p>One other worrying trend is that investment banks are no longer backstopping the IPO's they shop. If you remember the Facebook IPO, there was a lot of buying at the ipo price from the book runners to ensure that facebook didn't drop below that price. The last few tech ipo's had no such support and happily "broke", or traded below their initial offering price.