Whereas investors a year ago were demanding massive price discounts and assurances of profitability, nowadays they’re more willing to gamble. About one-fourth of the month’s offerings were small-cap companies, tech and nontech, generating less than $200 million in annual revenue, and many were relatively new.

Jon Nordmark, chief executive of online retailer eBags.com, recalls all too well the lean years following the burst of the dot-com bubble and terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Funding sources dried up, and the investment bankers once eager to push deals were nowhere to be seen. "We went two years without anybody calling," he says.

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