Been thinking about that 2011 IPO class lately and honestly, it's wild how many of those companies that had their IPO in 2011 absolutely crushed it right out of the gate. Like, almost everything that went public that year was trading up immediately—pretty rare to see that kind of broad strength across a cohort.

The biggest story was definitely HCA hitting the market for the third time. They moved 3.79 billion in stock and the fact that they could even find enough buyers tells you everything about appetite back then. Only one real dud in the bunch—Tornier was off a couple percent, but everything else had legs.

What's interesting is how you could spot the real winners if you paid attention to the quiet period dynamics. Take Broadsoft for example. That one basically sat around under $10 for like four months after going public in mid-2011, then suddenly it just rocketed to $47.50. That's the kind of setup you want to catch—analyst coverage finally kicks in and boom.

The clean energy space had some interesting plays too. Gevo was getting a lot of attention from the second-gen biofuel crowd. Up 30% in a month and people were hyped on the potential. Though real talk, those next-gen biofuels were still unproven at scale. Only worked if oil stayed north of $120 or government subsidies kicked in. Still, Gevo was positioning itself ahead of competitors for actual production ramp in 2012.

But the one that really stood out to me was Interxion. Yeah, it was only six weeks into its public life, but this company had serious fundamentals. Netherlands-based data center play with like a decade of operating history already. They were generating operating margins close to 40%—that's legitimately impressive. The model was clean too: just rent out space on the global backbone, don't own the hardware. Less risk, less capital tied up, less worry about gear getting obsolete.

Their customer base was locked into long-term contracts and they were planning to expand into places like Dublin and Dusseldorf with IPO proceeds. Free cash flow was the real draw though. Projections had it hitting a dollar per share the following year, maybe $1.25 by 2013. At those levels you're looking at a 9% FCF yield, which is solid. You could compare them to Rackspace or Savvis, but Interxion had a cleaner playbook.

The smartphone advertising angle was interesting too with companies like Velti trying to capitalize on mobile growth. And Nielsen Media, Kinder Morgan—there were some legitimate tortoise-type plays in that 2011 cohort if you wanted slower, steadier growth.

Thing about IPOs from that era is they'd often hit a rough patch when they reported disappointing quarters, but that usually created great entry points once they found their rhythm. The companies that had their IPO in 2011 taught a lot of people about patience in the new issue market. Some were obvious winners, some took time to prove themselves, but overall it was a solid year for new public companies.