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Comment by chadwilken | Hacker News Reader

Equity aside I don’t see any good reason to go public other than raising some capital. You no longer are free to operate as you wish and instead have to focus on dividends and pleasing the holders.

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That has been Matt Levine's thesis for a while, "Private markets are the new public markets". The public markets used to be the biggest source of capital, subject to stringent rules and regulations. Now you can get just as much money from the private capital markets, and it doesn't come with all the pesky rules around reporting.

It depends on how long cheap money will be available. It can be that the market is changing tack at the moment. A lot of capital is flowing in bonds at this moment.

> Now you can get just as much money from the private capital markets, and it doesn't come with all the pesky rules around reporting.

This is true but having lots of small public investors sometimes makes it easier to maneuver than a handful of big fish / massive investors akin to many small customers compared to 1-2 big clients that dictate your fate.

Public markets are similar to product development that targets many small customers compared to private markets that are like services / contracting that have a few or one big client, the latter is more risky and sometimes you are directed by the big fish rather than not being worried about having to please everyone.

Public markets are directly tied to everything now, the stocks, bonds, wages, jobs, retirement, funding, etc. Equities were created to give everyone a chance to invest and ride the tide up with the big boats, if companies are already tapped by the time they go public, public markets, retirement and market based wealth will not be as robust.

There. It's very difficult to get there, and it shifts the focus from creating value and revenue to looking good and calming down lay people who now control you, plus feeding an army of parasites charging a bajillion.

Today, it's also prone to sudden random fluctuations because an algo-trading software Bayes classifier decided to sell based on historical data it pulled out of its shiny metal ass.

Should be upfront with the startup employees if that is the case. Paper money is not real money.

Not if the founders have majority voting rights.

Even with majority voting rights, you're still subject to much more stringent accounting and reporting requirements, and Wall Street can and will punish you if you don't set and meet reasonable quarterly and yearly revenue guidance. A lower stock price means less access to future capital, so you still end up doing things to please the market.

Equity aside I don’t see any good reason to go public other than raising some capital.

What other reason is there for an IPO?

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