Bankers Get Creative Amid Dealmaking Lull

Startup investors have been scurrying lately to come up with new ways to turn their investments into cash, given that the conventional paths to cashing out—the startup goes public or gets acquired by a bigger tech firm—are much harder to pull off nowadays. Some investors are hoping private equity firms snap up their companies. Others are trying to find willing buyers for their stakes in the secondary markets. 

Then there’s this more controversial idea: tech investment bankers at some smaller banks, deep into their third straight year of deadened IPO activity, are trying to gin up enthusiasm for taking even a relatively small firm public.