An Initial Public Offering (IPO) is a critical event in a firm’s life cycle and can reshape its innovation strategy. Recent empirical studies suggest that after going public firms experience an increase in innovative productivity, but a decrease in exploratory search. Our paper explores the determinants of these outcomes of firms’ innovation by investigating the patenting activity of a sample of 70 US semiconductor firms that completed an IPO between 1997 and 2006. We attempt to account for the dynamics of self-selection of firms into IPO by considering matched pairs of technology ventures with similar pre-IPO characteristics, but that never went public. Results show that the amount of capital raised during the IPO and the fear of litigation foster the growth of innovative productivity. On the contrary, a decline in exploratory search after the IPO is associated with a larger use of trade secrets to protect the output of research on unfamiliar technologies.