Well the new year is not exactly off to a roaring start. According to VentureWire, it appears that there were two (2) venture backed companies that filed for IPOs in January. They were Medidata Solutions Inc. and Open Table Inc. If this pace keeps up, 2009 will see 24 IPO filings, representing an almost 500% increase over 2008 but still something in the general neighborhood of one-third of 2007. Also, we need to remember that filed and closed are two different things.