WSJ published an article last December discussing the booming of venture capital. The venture-capital-backed IPOs during the week of December 7th, 2020, of DoorDash Inc. and Airbnb Inc. cap a string of listings that have helped make this the most lucrative year on record for IPOs in terms of money raised. More than $157 billion has been raised as of December 10thover a third of that in the past 11 weeksand the number of listings in the largest since the final hurrah of the dot-com boom in 2000. The soaring public offerings are showering returns on some of the biggest names in tech investing, in particular Sequoia Capital, which backed both DoorDash and Airbnb as well as cloud-computing company Snowflake Inc. and videogame company Unity Software Inc., all of which ranked among the year's 15 biggest listings, according to Dealogic.

So, what factors make the recent spate of IPOs particularly surprising? What factors appear to be supporting recent IPO valuations? Discuss the concern raised in the article that recent IPOs are "an example of how the pandemic has widened the country's wealth gap." Do you agree/disagree? Why/why not?