A 76% gain on a day when the stock market suffered deep losses is certainly nothing to sneeze at. We have to believe that if the rest of the market did not fall apart, the first-day performance of virtualization software maker VMware Inc. would have been even better. As it is, VMware closed at $51 Tuesday after its shares were priced at $29 on Monday. The huge gain was expected for what was seen as the hottest IPO of the year, and perhaps the most high-profile since Google Inc. went public in 2004.

Even though things could have been better, we won’t shed any tears for those lucky enough to get in on the $29 share price, and certainly not for parent company EMC Corp. After paying just $635 million for VMware in 2003, EMC's post-IPO 87% stake was worth a cool $16 billion. —David Shabelman

See Aug. 14 story in TheDeal.com

Tags: VMware, virtualization, ipo, m&a, vc, venture+capital