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Comment by rukittenme | Hacker News Reader

I am never taking a company public. Why would anyone subject themselves to this?

No one takes a company public for fun. They do it for funds. Especially for something like a car company that requires a lot of initial investment to get going. They can't start making money right away like a SaaS company might.

Not wanting to take a company public reminds me of the story of one of Schwarzenegger's critics.

"I never want to you look like you."

"Don't worry, you never will."

Lying to investors is illegal regardless of whether your company is public or private

I think you're implying that, #1: There is a trend where public companies face unreasonable or unfair accountability laws, and #2: This case is an example of that. Am I off base? If not, #1 sounds like a reasonable argument could be made, though it would be better made explicitly rather than implicitly. #2, on the other hand, definitely needs elaboration.

https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&C...

That's why. Filing 424: secondary offerings to the public market.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000119312516...

There's $2,000,000,000 right there raised through the public market.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000119312516...

There's 300-million or so.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000119312514...

There's another $2,000,000,000 raised.

--------

Companies go public to raise money. Elon Musk wanted to spend $5 Billion on a Gigafactory. How else was he going to get the money?

s/2,000,000,000,000/2,000,000,000/g

Ah shoot, I miscounted. Thanks for the correction. I've edited my post.

Your private investors could sue you for this just as much!

You may also some day want employees, and it seems unlikely you will be able to compete in compensation on the private side.

If you are a CEO who's partial to headline-grabbing stunts over listening to what your corporate counsel is telling you about what you can legally announce, then yeah, you shouldn't go public.

Tesla and Musk are doing a lot of shady, semi-legal stuff. Public companies have a harder time getting away with that. So in this regard, yes, staying private is better.

You won't. Your investors will.

Getting access to public investment?

Subject themselves to what? Having to be transparent and tell the truth in exchange for massive amounts of funding?

Naive. How about short sellers spreading fake news (or blowing news out of proportion) to suppress the price of your stock?

Your proposition might have legs, but I don't think the parent post was malicious enough to deserve prefacing your reply with such a curt criticism.

It seems a bit silly to bash shorts for "spreading fake news" in defense of a CEO that settled with the SEC for demonstrably spreading fake news to combat shorts he perceives as persecuting his company.

two wrongs don't make a right, or so the saying goes

I haven't seen much evidence the shorts have committed a wrong.

Where's the -evidence-, as opposed to theories, that short sellers are actively and illegally manipulating the stock price with demonstrably false statements?

False statements like "I've secured funding to take Tesla private", for example...

I disagree, it was of the same nature and tone.

Short sellers keep prices in check and offer a healthy degree of scepticism. Also, short squeezes are plenty of fun when you're on the long side.

"It sucks to run a public company" - ...someone

It is hard to pay market rates in cash when you're a startup, and nobody wants to own shares they cannot sell; allowing sales without being public gets messy quickly; and there is also a limit to the number of shareholders before you are required to go public.

> and there is also a limit to the number of shareholders before you are required to go public.

You're never forced to go public, but you will be required to disclose financial data to the public if you have more than 1,999 individual shareholders and assets with a value that is greater than or equal to 10 million dollars.

Just don't take any investor money and you will be fine.

You want to grow your company and need a ton of money.

money?

Just don't accuse upstanding citizens of being pedos, or try to manipulate your company's stock price with false promises of buying it back at a premium and you'll be fine.

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