Shares of mattress retailer Casper Sleep sprung to life Thursday in their stock market debut... but it was a bumpy ride getting there.

The stock jumped as high as nearly 30 percent in its first day of trade.

But Casper's IPO had priced at the bottom end of a range that had already been reduced, slashing the online mattress seller's valuation by more than half in less than a year.

This IPO was just the latest sign of the mismatch between what a company is worth once it goes public compared to how it is valued in the private market.

There were a number of high-profile IPO flops last year, namely Uber, Lyft and Smile DirectClub, all a result of investor angst over money-losing companies coming to market.

The scrutiny facing office-sharing company WeWork was so intense it ended up pulling its IPO.

Through direct-to-consumer mattress sales, Casper generated more than $312 million in revenue for the first nine months of 2019 but also posted a wider net loss of more than $67 million.

The stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange.