In the real world there is a syndicate of investment banks that take on filling the IPO. They spend a few months getting interest from large customers and determining a reasonable valuation. On the IPO date the first trades are all filling earlier commitments to buy at the price finally set by the banks. All of the banks have money on the line themselves and are expecting to support the share price.
Maybe if mods voting yes were required to hold some amount of stock for 30 days or so you would both get better reviews, and have a clear signal of investors appetite for a particular issue.
That's a great idea. Maybe when investors vote they could plug in the number of shares they'd be willing to commit. Their vote wouldn't be tied to it, but it could be used as a weighing mechanism, and whatever they plug in they would be bound to. (site would reserve it and auto-execute somehow at ipo.)
Maybe even better would be to allow ALL users to pre-commit on pending assets. The amounts designated would go in reserve before the IPO, and the shares purchased would be locked after IPO for some specific time frame. Then IPO's would be limited to some percentage of the pre-commitments. IE, an IPO would not be allowed to release more than 150% or 200% of the pre-committed share count.
It'd also be a great way to prevent the situations where an issuer needs XXX amount to get started, then only raises 50% of that in the IPO.
Lots to think about.