Search advertising technology company Marin Software has filed a registration statement for an IPO with the Securities and Exchanges commission.

This is the first ad-tech company to go public in 2013, a year that could be chock-full of IPOs.

The number of shares for sale and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. But we do know that the company plans to list its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “MRIN.”

Marin helps advertisers and agencies manage and track paid search ad campaigns across Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu (China’s search behemoth), and other search sites. Traditionally focused on search, Marin has expanded into display advertising, social, and mobile, a strategic move given that according to a filing ”a substantial majority” of its customers use it to manage Google AdWords campaigns.

Marin Software founder and CEO Christopher Lien

A strong sign for investors is that annual revenues have steadily risen: Forbes reports that the company pulled in $42.5 million for the first nine months of 2012, up from $24.7 million in the comparable span of 2011. Marin may also benefit from the burgeoning interest in business-to-business startups.

“The chatter about enterprise startups is more a function of the fact that consumer startups look less appealing [to investors] more than anything else,” said CB Insights’ CEO Anand Sanwal in a recent interview. “Folk are saying now that enterprise is the place they should be playing.”

However, Marin has not yet reached profitability, which may knock investors’ confidence, particularly given Zynga’s and Groupon’s recent stock woes.

“We do not expect to be profitable in the foreseeable future, and we cannot be certain that we will be able to attain profitability on a quarterly or annual basis, or if we do, that we will sustain profitability,” Marin stated in a filing. 

For the entirety of 2011, Marin had revenues of $36.1 million and a loss of $17.4 million, and the company failed to book an annual net profit in 2012. In addition, the company admits in a filing that its usage-based pricing model “makes it difficult to accurately forecast revenues.”

VentureBeat predicted an IPO from the company in the first quarter of 2013; rumors have been circulating in the press for at least six months. In 2011, Marin brought on a CFO from Shutterfly, a sure sign that the company expected to go public in the near future.

Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank are acting as lead managers for the offering. UBS Securities and Stifel, Nicolaus & Company are acting as book-running managers, and Wells Fargo Securities is acting as a co-manager.

For technology founders, an IPO is like marriage: It takes years of preparation, and it’s a pain to have to report to someone, but it’s usually the ultimate goal.

Equidity‘s outspoken founder and CEO, Mona DeFrawi, sees some major structural problems with the IPO process. Namely, she said that markets have shifted from being investor-focused to trader-focused, and “no one has noticed.”

Mona DeFrawi believes the IPO process is broken.

This has resulted in tech companies failing to attract the “right buyers,” according to DeFrawi.  Traders will typically only hold on to stock for less than 24 hours so they can make money if the stock pops or drops. Meanwhile, long-term growth investors care about the “fundamentals,” meaning the company is less likely to crash.

To support private companies that are readying for an IPO, DeFrawi (a serial entrepreneur and former lecturer at Johns Hopkins University) is distributing invitations for 130 high-growth companies to participate in a beta service called “Equidity 360 degrees.”

Related: Read our IPO predictions for 2013.

The private companies that accept the invitation will be connected with long-term growth investors; they can securely share financials and key company information in advance of an IPO.

Equidity will make money through selling its advisory services. It’s a similar business model to DeFrawi’s previous company, InsideVentures, which was acquired by investment platform SecondMarket in 2009.

DeFrawi will help these pre-IPO companies line up investors that are in it for the long haul and not just for a few short hours.

“These companies wouldn’t put their software out without sales and marketing, but they do it with their stock all the time,” said DeFrawi. During her career, she has also worked in investor relations — a role which believes is undervalued, misunderstood, and that some consider as a “chick job.”

She said most investor relations professionals are adept at paperwork and scheduling conference calls with analysts but forget about the marketing and business development work that is needed to attract growth investors.

With companies like Dell going private, DeFrawi fears that tech startups will delay an IPO for as long as possible. She cites research that over 90 percent of job growth occurs post-IPO (although media reports suggest this may be overblown).

As part of the beta launch, DeFrawi compiled a list of tech companies that are in a strong position to IPO, which she shared with us. They include:

• Cloud storage and CRM: Dropbox, Sugar CRM, Box
• Consumer tech: Eventbrite, Gilt Groupe, Living Social
• Business software services: Docusign, SurveyMonkey, Marketo, and Evernote
• Next generation storage: Violin Memory and Nimble Storage
• Wearable computing and health: Jawbone and Zocdoc

Violin Memory and its super-fast Flash memory service is hurtling toward a highly successful IPO.

Bloomberg Businessweek reported today that the Silicon Valley company filed to go public under the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) act. This allows Violin Memory to keep its public offering under the radar until three weeks prior to the roadshow; for this reason, it has not yet appeared in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

According to Bloomberg, the valuation on the table is a sky-high $2 billion.

Spokesperson Suzanne Chan declined to comment on Violin Memory’s filing.

Violin’s storage device are in Oracle’s and Cisco’s products, and it recently announced an alliance with Symantec. As we reported, Violin became a storage system maker in August — a major step up in the electronics food chain.

This spring, it raised a $50 million fourth-round, bringing its total venture capital funding to $172 million. At that time, it was valued at more than $800 million.

With the enterprise technology space on the upswing, this will be the second IPO this summer. Workday confounded expectations with its ass-kicking public offering. In early trading, the human resources software maker soared 72 percent.