I am working on the evaluation of this kind of ecommerce, like early-stage Taobao.com, Pinduoduo.Inc, even Tik Tok. IPO price can be a good indicator but definitely very volatile. This group of ecommerce in China is called New Economy. I want to find a tentative method to value it in a monetary perspective.
Market price or IPO price will be influenced by market sentiment and human behaviour (Kahnemann), whereas today's value may be more meaningful if evaluated as the present value of discounted future cash flows (Graham, Buffett).
IPO price is mostly speculative. People buy stocks of these companies (Taobao, Pindoudou, etc.) all gambles on the unknown.
THROUGH TRAFFIC may be turned into value, but for these kinds of websites is also speculative. In order to put a value on it, the traffic data must be mined carefully. This methodology is beyond the grasp of investors. At IPO, investors have no way of knowing how to access these data or mine it.
Perhaps change the value paradigm!
use the iirc framework to value social relationships etc