But the way how it was distributed.. Meh, it'll be a stain for a long time.
NXT IPO lasted for 53 days, 28 Sep 2013 to 19 Nov 2013 when the Genesis Block was created.
Most IPOs these days run less than that and manage to attract much more capital than NXT did.
It's not NXT's fault that almost nobody did IPOs back in those days and most people were afraid to send any funds.
IPO is not a way to distribute currency. Perhaps people in 2013 were more educated than the current ones
Just imagine how well NXT would be doing if the coin generation would have been set similar to XMR...