PayPal, Inc. Initial Public Offering

PayPal, Inc.'s road to its Initial Public Offering (IPO) was rocky and strew with problems. It postponed it offering just the day before it was scheduled due to a lawsuit filed and many felt that its price would suffer as the result of decisions by Louisiana claiming that PayPal was violating banking laws. The offering was postponed because of a lawsuit filed by privately held online security firm CertCo, charging PayPal with patent infringement. …

… and overcame each one. CertCo eventually dropped their suit and PayPal is up and running in every state, including Louisiana where a visit to their website turned up a flyer for a fundraiser where PayPal was an accepted form of payment. If the owners had just been a little more careful in their planning and avoided the stumbling blocks they placed before themselves, there is no telling how profitable their IPO might have been.