because of Peter[0], otherwise you're right. Unless there's something else non-American like me cannot see :p
there is -- palantir is a privately held company. in his interview with charlie rose, alex karp mentions that being a private company is essential to palantir, though he doesn't specify why. at a minimum, it means they have no obligation to shareholders and they can take whatever contract they want without public scrutiny.
2016 saw 106 IPOs. That's below horrible recession years in the early 1980s. And that was with the stock market at very high levels.
The stock market has hit new all-time highs, the Nasdaq is on the moon, and very few companies want to go public. The entire vast shift to the private market occurred solely due to Sarbanes Oxley. The simultaneous extreme growth of the private capital market for ventures, the drastic reduction in IPOs vs the prior 30 years (while there has been an explosion of billion dollar start-ups), and the fact that the best companies are choosing to wait a lot longer to IPO vs the prior 30 years, makes it overwhelmingly obvious what has happened.
They're becoming rarer, except for ventures which require an enormous amount of working capital, because angels and other investors typically have more cash than pre-Sequoia times to lend out to ventures which are smart about their cash & business models.
No. They have to act kb the interests of shareholders, whatever interest that is.
>> Serving shareholders’ “best interests” is not the same thing as either maximizing profits, or maximizing shareholder value. "Shareholder value," for one thing, is a vague objective: No single “shareholder value” can exist, because different shareholders have different values. Some are long-term investors planning to hold stock for years or decades; others are short-term speculators.
>> Also, most investors care not only about their portfolios, but also about their jobs, their tax burdens, the products they buy and the air they breathe. Which is to say, companies that maximize profits by firing employees, avoiding taxes, selling shoddy products or polluting the environment can harm their shareholders more than helping them.
and
> And what exactly is the interest of the shareholders, rather than maximising share value / dividend payout?
Wait. By your own logic why would anyone invest in anything that wasn't public if you were just throwing money at some dude that wanted to do something that wasn't in your interest? Your logic makes no sense. It sounds like you're saying, it's sad that founders don't get to spend money anyway they want without carrying about the wishes of who gave them the money.
Because usually you get preferred stock, that means that all the 'crazy' non-profit-oriented things that the founders might be doing are still done with their money, rather than yours.
There's just a difference in both incentives and philosophy, isn't there? If the company is controlled by a private person, they're not obliged to make decisions that are 'best for the company'; and anyone choosing to go along for the ride is expressing trust into that persons ideas and goals. (And any contractual terms they set in their shareholder agreement; but the owners can refuse terms that misalign with their vision)
>It sounds like you're saying, it's sad that founders don't get to spend money anyway they want without carrying about the wishes of who gave them the money.
No; I'm saying that if as a founder you want to be able to spend money any way you want, you do not want to go public.