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Comment by maerF0x0 | Hacker News Reader

I've long thought about a law whereby companies over some 409a valuation must allow public trading of their stock. For example maybe all companies over $5B or some other quite large valuation would be required to allow public sale of stock.

This would be good for much of society. It gives liquidity to employees, it creates a market forces valuation, it allows pensions and other institutions to more accurately index the economy as a whole.

What are some downsides I'm missing?

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> What are some downsides I'm missing?

Maybe forcing owners to give up equity in their business just because their valuation hit some magic number? Keep in mind that not all $5B companies are Silicon Valley, VC-funded startups, and some founders still retain the majority (or in rare cases 100%) of their equity.

I also think you're over-exaggerating the benefits. None of those things seem like problems that need fixing.

This wouldn't per se force owners to give up equity, it'd merely prevent them from making it available to a limited circle of investors.

But in doing so one or more of the equity owners would have to give up a percentage of their holdings. So yes, you would be forcing people to sell equity when they'd potentially rather hold it.

This could be done without forcing anyone to sell if companies were allowed to be listed with very little volume/liquidity. Essentially those who own shares could publicly trade them, but there would be no IPO, and possibly no shares available to buy.

Public companies tend to focus on making money instead of innovation?

They become slaves of their quarter reports and lose the ability of investing in long term projects?

Maybe a bit exaggerated? :D

I think shareholder expectations determine what a company does. If the company is a growth company, shareholders will gladly allow the company to innovate, but if it's a blue chip, they will expect dividends.

Right, but there are important, large companies that are neither of these things. A privately-held company can act as a pseudo-nonprofit, if its management wants, investing in the benefit of humanity at the expense of both profit and growth. The possibility of shareholder lawsuits makes that much harder to do.

Hers’s One complication:

Assume I start a business. I own 100% of it. It grows like crazy, and 5 years later, it’s worth $5 billion. Now you require me to go through all the regulatory hoops so that my stock can trade publicly. But nobody will buy my stock. Because there is only one owner, and he ain’t selling.

Simplistic, I know, but problems very similar to this actually exist.

Going public is super expensive. Are you saying the state should pay companies to go public?

yeah its hard to say... I would imagine most companies could create new stock to sale in order to cover the costs? I was mostly thinking about creating liquidity for those who want to sell existing stock, more than raising from sale of new stock .

In freedom, liquidity is plentiful. Every company is public if every employee is allowed to sell their stock in the open market. It is precisely regulation that creates private markets. Do without and you will cheaply have an infinite Amount of public companies, without the significant expenditures of dues to wall street.

How expensive?

I once read about 10% of the company, but i wouldn't bet on that memory.

It still requires banks, companies, lawyers, accountants, etc. Its in the millions for sure.

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