The 5 tech startups most likely to go public next year

It's been a slow year for tech IPOs.

To date, there have only been 28 tech IPOs in 2015, totaling $9.4 billion in value - down from 62 deals in 2014 valued at $40.8 billion total, data from Dealogic show. Even excluding last year's $25 billion Alibaba IPO, activity this year is down about 40%.

But analysts, bankers, and pundits predict that trend toward staying private is likely to reverse next year.

• Companies' financial health and who their investors are (big names like Sequoia rank higher than smaller names)
• Which industries within tech companies are in (big data, internet of things, and cybersecurity rank higher than the daily deals space, for example)
• Companies' hiring trends (hiring VPs of sales is not a good sign, but hiring HR professionals, or a CFO is)
• Customer and partner signings
• Sentiment (measured by media and social media mentions)