Before the opening bell rang on June 7, it took about 20 minutes for traders at the New York Stock Exchange to agree on a fair price for Textura Corp.'s initial public offering. The problem was a gap in supply and demand. Textura received preliminary orders for 72 million shares, but it had only 5 million to sell. Originally priced at $15, the stock jumped to open at $24 and is now trading at around $30 per share.
In less than 10 years, Textura's cloud-based software platform has become the industry standard for getting paid. Joining a small list of Chicago-based tech startups to go public (Groupon was the last local IPO, in 2011), the company raised $86.2 million to pay down debt and fund new ventures, including a push into global construction—a $7-trillion market.