We're more profitable than Amazon.com, have more growth potential than General Motors, boast a more stable leadership and fewer marketing fiascos than Coca-Cola. Consequently, with the Dow and Nasdaq hitting record highs seemingly every other day, I have decided, after discussing it with my wife and exercising the proxy of our newborn son, to take my family public.
Since making the decision, I've had the most dizzying week. On Sunday night -- before my wife and I had even gone to our board (of which we are the only two members) to get approval for the public offering -- Goldman, Sachs called to say it was extremely interested in underwriting the I.P.O. It had crunched some numbers and looked at the multiples that comparable start-ups were getting. It said the Postman Family would probably go out at $12 to $14 per share on the first day of trading and hit $100 by day's end, before splitting 2 or even 3 for 1.
It also wanted to discuss what exactly the Postman Family brings to the table, technology/content-wise, and I appreciated that, but just then my wife called out that First Boston was on the other line. So Goldman, scared, quickly assured me that knowing what the Postmans did exactly would be "nice, but if not, it won't be a deal-breaker."
On Monday, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Silicon Valley's top venture capital firm, faxed me a proposal to seed the Postman Family with $10 million for a 20 percent equity stake, and I accepted, though I felt like a fool after lunch, when I got an offer of $20 mil for 10 percent.
With the additional financing I received on Tuesday from Lucent Technologies, Time-Warner, Merck and Orange County, Thestreet.com estimated that the Postman Family was well on its way to having a post-I.P.O. market cap of more than $12 billion, or more than the value of International Paper, Eastern Airlines and the Wetson's hamburger chain combined -- though, to be fair, the last two companies went out of business many years ago.
On Wednesday, my parents expressed concern about what the I.P.O. meant, and I assured them that we would still get together for Passover and Thanksgiving and stuff. When I pointed out that a really successful I.P.O. could mean the possibility of spinning off my mother and father, together or separately, and thus generating more revenue, they backed off a bit.
When I went on to explain to my parents that my wife and I have the potential to grow our new company 33 percent in 18 months with the mere birth of another child -- 66 percent if we have twins -- they backed off even more.
In a conference call yesterday, I told the financial press why the Postman Family I.P.O. was such an exciting opportunity for investors of every stripe -- institutional aggressive-growth managers, mutual fund managers with no growths whatsoever, day traders, even the Beardstown Ladies.
"Why is this so attractive?" I asked rhetorically, and no one challenged me because they were all hoping that I might slip them some founder's stock after the call.
"Publicly held families are clearly the wave of the future."
Though I have no delusions that the Kennedy or King Families won't ultimately have a greater market cap than the Postman Family, we are first to market and establishing the standard. When industry consolidation occurs, the Postmans will surely be absorbed by someone, which should mean better hotel room rates for reunions.
Last night, in another conference call with industry analysts, I wowed them with more good news: the Postman Family has never laid off a member; we've already created a brand, if accidentally (the traffic our Web site name generates just because people confuse us with the Postal Service is staggering), and, finally and most important, we provide unique, high-quality products and services to an ever-expanding, demographically appealing audience.
My wife and son and I are extremely excited to announce that shares in The Postman Family (Nasdaq: POSF) will be sold sometime in late summer, after the road show. I know smart ones out there will get in early, and please visit us at www.postmanfamily.com!
Andrew Postman is the author of ``What's in an Age: Who Did What When, From Age 1 to 100.''
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