Free (Handout) IPO route Spotify's outside counsel Latham & Watkins general counse Horacio Gutierrez authored a case study Latham "Spotify Case Study: Structuring and Executing a Direct Listing," "We at Latham & Watkins put a lot of thought and energy into coming up and implementing and executing a path that hand't been taken before," said Marc Jaffe, a Latham partner who worked on the direct listing. He said he and his case study co-authors wanted to share their experience as a learning opportunity for others.  Spotify They shouldn't need money [or] additional capital, they should have a diversified and existing shareholder base and, then, three, it's very helpful if they're an established brand name with a simple business model," said Rodgers. Spotify, which approached Latham in May 2017 about going public via a direct listing, was a company that checked all of those boxes, Rodgers said. He said the company wanted to provide existing shareholders greater flexibility than traditional IPOs do. Traditional IPOs include lock-up restrictions preventing insiders holding company stock from selling their shares for a period—usually between three to six months—after going public.  The company's "The company was focused on providing as much information to the market as possible to enable market-based price [determination] of the stock," Rodgers said. He and Jaffe noted that Spotify held an "Investor Day" that qualified as a road show under the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's rules and lasted more than two hours, about twice as long as the average IPO equivalent, according to the case study. The meeting was livestreamed around the world and included presentations from all members of Spotify's leadership team.  ithout an underwriter to purchase stock at a price that people know ahead of the listing ... there is a higher chance of negative volatility in the stock, which could result in it going down upon listing," Rodgers said.  "The big [challenge] we faced was the uncertainty of doing something new," he said. "That is always risky. That will decrease over time, as and if more people follow this path."