Back in 2011, if you were hunting for growth opportunities, the IPO market was absolutely impossible to ignore. I remember watching LinkedIn's stock absolutely rip higher that year, and it became the perfect barometer for how hungry investors were getting for companies with real expansion potential. The numbers told the story pretty clearly too—bankers had moved 381 deals globally in Q2 alone, pulling in over 60 billion in capital. That was a solid jump from the prior year's 334 deals worth 43 billion.

Markets had gotten shaky earlier in the year, which almost killed the IPO momentum entirely, but things picked up momentum heading into summer. That's when several high-profile companies that had their IPO in 2011 started getting serious about their public debuts. Let me walk through six names that were on everyone's radar back then.

Chrysler was the wildcard. The automaker had nearly imploded during the financial crisis, and even with Fiat's cash injection, things looked grim for a minute there. But their truck and Jeep divisions started turning heads again with refreshed models that were actually commanding solid prices. Analysts were penciling in 10% sales growth for 2012, which made the timing for an IPO look pretty compelling.

Then there was Groupon, which had absolutely dominated 2010 with its group-buying model. The expansion was aggressive, but honestly, the durability of that business model felt questionable even back then. Google was already taking shots at them with their own platform, and you had scrappy competitors like Livingsocial snapping at their heels. Companies that had their IPO in 2011 in this space faced real fragmentation risks.

Zynga was the gaming darling that came out of nowhere. Farmville and Cityville had captured the smartphone gaming zeitgeist, and the company was already hitting 235 million in quarterly revenue despite being practically brand new. But here's where it got sketchy—profit margins were sitting below 5%. For a software business, that should have been a red flag about whether they could actually scale profitably. A 20 billion valuation felt pretty aggressive for a company with such limited track record.

AMC Entertainment operated nearly 400 theaters and was the third biggest player in the industry. They'd managed to raise ticket prices consistently without destroying attendance, which was impressive. But the Netflix threat was real, and at some point, movie night was going to price out too many families. Hard to see where sustainable growth was coming from when your whole model depended on keeping people coming to theaters.

Carbonite caught my attention because their remote backup business was firing on all cylinders. Revenue was doubling annually since 2006, and early 2011 numbers suggested 30-40% growth was still in the cards. The problem? They were burning cash hard—losing about 2 dollars for every 3 in sales. Management needed to make a convincing argument about a path to profitability, and that's where companies that had their IPO in 2011 in this space faced investor skepticism.

Finally, there was Frac Tech Holdings, which had been waiting since December to actually pull off their IPO. Hydraulic fracturing was controversial as hell—people worried about groundwater contamination. But the energy industry itself was getting behind tighter regulation and chemical disclosure requirements, which actually improved the backdrop for their eventual public offering.

Looking back at companies that had their IPO in 2011, each one had their own unique set of challenges. Growth was already hard to find that year, and market uncertainty made it even tougher. But for investors willing to dig into these stories, there were opportunities scattered throughout the pipeline if you knew where to look.