The fastest floats ever - ranked

What's the record speed a startup's gone from founded to floated? New research by Tide, a provider of business current accounts, reveals the all-time leaderboard.

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Number one? HDFC Bank, currently India's largest private sector bank by assets, listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange of India. Incorporated in 1994, it went public a year later.

The research also looks at the time it took for the world's largest companies to go public. Amazon floated after just three years. Saudi Aramco, the national oil company of Saudi Arabia, took a little longer.

You can read the full research here.

The lesson? Going public early can be the springboard for a leap to greatness. An early IPO was the right path for AMD, Intel and Texas Instruments, amongst others. Who needs Series B or VCs when you're aiming to be a global enterprise?