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Eric Lefkofsky have it away the public listing rodeo well and is about to enter it for a fourth time . The successive entrepreneur , whose net Charles Frederick Worth is estimate atnearly $ 4 billion , has already taken three business he ’s found public .
Today he ’s the founder of Tempus , a genomic testing and data point analysis party preparing to IPO . But he ’s best known as the co - founder of casual deals pioneer Groupon , which went public at a evaluation ofnearly $ 13 billion in 2011 , in one of that year ’s most high - profile debuts .
Groupon ’s initial public offering and post - IPO years wereinfamously troubled , though the public itemisation of his other two society — InnerWorkings in 2006 and Echo Global Logistics in 2009 — did n’t raise significant flags for investors and did well for Lefkofsky . InnerWorkings , a supplying chain startup he ground in 2001 , sold toprivate fairness in 2021for a fraction of its IPO mart capital .
Meanwhile , the stock of Echo Global Logistics appreciate steadily during its 11 - year public liveliness story before also being sell to individual equity at a50 % premiumover its last trading price in 2021 .
Some of the disputation with Groupon involved a report that Lefkofsky pocketed over $ 300 million from Groupon ’s pre - IPO round , leave behind little work upper-case letter for the companionship , and cutting its reported revenue in about one-half in retool S-1 filings after regulator scrutinized the financials in its initial S-1 . That irregular decision has also brought to light another softwood from his past . He sell his dot - com - era company Starbelly.com in 2000 to a 50 - class - old company ; a year subsequently , that company filed for failure , harmonize to some theme .
All of this has given Lefkofsky the report of have somewhat of a golden touch , at least for himself , but maybe not for long - condition investor of his company .
With Tempus , Lefkofsky is taking another guesswork at create a long - long-lasting , worthful companionship . It was reportedly his married woman ’s successful breast cancer treatment that result him to observe Tempus in 2015 .
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“ I was perplexed at how piddling datum was a part of her care , ” he toldForbes last year . “ I became fixated with this idea that there was all this engineering that had been produce for other industries that could be implement to cancer caution and help physicians make data - driven decision . ”
He step down from Groupon ’s CEO character in 2015 , when the company ’s value had fall to$2.6 billion . ( Groupon ’s market capital today is around $ 600 million . ) At that meter , Lefkofsky focused his tending on an early - phase venture firm , Lightbank .
Interestingly , the TempusS-1 filingsays that he ’s taken no wage for the preceding two age ( the S-1 did n’t provide more than two eld ’ Charles Frederick Worth of administrator compensation for any named police officer ) . However , the filing also said that he ’s due to be paid $ 800,000 and an $ 800,000 bonus starting in 2025 . And , although he was n’t drawing a salary , he was give a $ 5.3 million dividend from society stock this year , the prospectus demo . The filing also bear witness that Tempus has also covered the cost of $ 7.5 million worth of preferred shares issued to him and has pay $ 200,000 for his private plane expense .
Tempus ’ tax income were $ 531 million in 2023 , a 66 % growth from $ 321 million in 2022 . But the party is still hemorrhaging a lot of cash , with final personnel casualty of $ 290 million ( in 2023 ) and $ 214 million ( in 2022 ) . Although , the silver lining in its financials is that operating loss border has shrunk from 83 % in 2022 to 37 % in 2023,according to the S-1 filing .
Additionally , Tempus has an arrangement with Pathos AI , another party Lefkofsky founded . Pathos AI is a drug discovery platform found in 2020 . Pathos pay Tempus for a right to certify its data . Meanwhile , Tempus ’ COO , Ryan Fukushima , serves as Pathos ’ CEO and splits his time between the two companies .
There are other indications that Lefkofsky is exercising more power at Tempus than is customary .
While Tempus has not yet fill out its principal shareowner ’s chart , revealing only that Lefkofsky is among them and owns at least 5 % of the company , the billionaire clear wants to keep full command of the caller after it goes public . Tempus has granted his part a whopping 30 votes per part . Super vote shares are not strange , but 10 vote per share is more common , with 20 vote debate high . So this is an unusually gamy shareholder influence for a CEO of a health care company , and we ’ll have to see if it is reduced in next S-1s , indicating whether prospective investor have resist at it .
Yet , Tempus ’s S-1 may not be exaggerating how crucial Lefkofsky is to the future of the company . A healthcare VC investing in companies in genomics and data psychoanalysis has told TechCrunch that Tempus would not have grown to its size of it , nor garnered so much capital without Lefkofsky ’s marketing and fundraising skills .
Tempus rear $ 1.42 billion in funding from investors , including his firm Lightbank , as well as from NEA , Revolution Growth , T. Rowe Price , Novo Holdings , Franklin Templeton and Baillie Gifford . The companionship was last valued at $ 8.1 billion in October 2022 . Tempus ’ S-1 filing also revealed that it late receive $ 200 million from SoftBank .
disregardless of how much capital Tempus conjure in its initial public offering , the troupe ’s prospectus made it clear that it ’s still far from breakeven and will require “ to nurture additional cap in the future . ” While most unprofitable companies loosely include this detail in their prospectuses , it is likely that investors will ask Tempus to have a keep an eye on - on public offering at some point , which could be a pull on their share price .
Tempus is also taste to position itself as an AI fellowship even though AI gross accounted for only $ 5.5 million of revenue , approximately 1 % of total revenue in 2023 .
“ I see Tempus gambling on their growth and good timing for AI across life sciences , but I do n’t suppose the caller has prove that yet with their current offer , ” the healthcare investor said .
The company said in its S-1 filing that while its “ AI product line of work is nascent , it plans to embed AI , include generative AI , in every look of its diagnostic prick . ” Tempus declined to comment beyond what is listed in the S-1 .
