Sure. You're not nearly as beholden to shareholders with short-term investment horizons. See e.g. Dell going private.

Absolutely: A major one is that you can skirt all kinds of financial disclosure laws that apply to public companies. The world doesn't get to know your volume, your profit margin, or which of your divisions makes most if its money. This means your competition has a lot more trouble competing with you than if you have to provide public quarterly statements. I have seen examples of well run companies that just happened to be private, and then see industry reports that made hilariously wrong guesses regarding those key metrics that the competition would love to know.

At the same time, it's far harder to provide great compensation to your employees if they can't sell their shares in the market, and at some point, your investors might be screaming for liquidity. But staying private as long as you can get away with is a good idea: It's just that few companies planning to be huge can.

It depends on the situation.

Being private means the company doesn't have to follow compliance rules strictly. A good example of that is accounting rules.

There are tons of companies out there which show non-GAAP profitability. But non-GAAP actually means companies can ignore stuff like ESOPs etc to create their balance sheets.

When it comes to creating GAAP reports these same companies tend to be unprofitable by a large margin.

Then there is the flip side too. Even if the company is profitable but not profitable enough. Let's say a hypothetical $1 in profit. And then company needs more than $1 to keep it afloat but no investor is interested. Then they have two options - raise debt or go public and raise money. Out of the two going public is slightly better.

You can throw lots of money at kooky, far out bets without having to answer to shareholders?

The only upside to going public if you're profitable is to get a quick injection. The IMO massive downside is that you've just lost control of your company.

At some level an IPO is just like another raise. Any article or advice about not taking VC money applies.