Frank Quattrone's team took Evolve public — one of the last three tech IPOs before the bust

Who this is

Every top investment bank competed to take Evolve Software public — Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank, and the former teams of Montgomery Securities, Robertson Stephens and CSFB. Evolve chose CSFB because Frank Quattrone — the defining technology banker of the era — had moved his team there from Morgan Stanley when Credit Suisse decided to buy its way to the top of US investment banking, and Quattrone's team lead-managed Evolve's IPO in August 2000: by Jonathan Hare's count, one of the last three technology companies public before the bust. The record notes the timing without decoration — the door closed weeks behind them, and everyone praying the bubble would keep growing included, by his own published admission, Hare.

Connected from here

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Where this came from

Everything above is a distillation. The primary source is published in full, so that any claim on this page can be walked back to what was actually said — and where the two differ, the source governs.

What is missing, and how to fix it

This entry is deliberately incomplete. The gaps below are the things only certain people can settle — and settling one is a contribution like any other: recorded, timestamped and attributed to whoever made it.

• The other two of the last three IPOs, for the record
• The bake-off dates