In my experience, if you simply google th company's name and write "IPO" after it, it should give you tons of info. One way to know that they are coming soon, is that the filed the necessary paperwork with the SEC. Most of the IPO websites will tell you what the ticker symbol will be, if it has already been decided on. Since Visa has a lot of hype, most of your financial news sources (yahoo finance, USA Today, WSJ) will be right on top of it, like they were with Blackstone, to let us know when we can buy stocks. Buying an IPO, from my experience, is no different than any other publicly traded company.