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Comment by harryh | Hacker News Reader

Why is Stripe still private?

There's two main incentives to go public: raising money and liquidity.

They don't need to tap public markets to raise money. And investors are likely OK holding off on liquidity if the valuation continues to rise.

Going public typically requires a significant amount of effort across the company, which can reduce focus on other initiatives key to growing the business.

I'm not sure what Stripe's policy is on selling shares on secondary markets, but another reason is that at some point employees need liquidity too.

Definitely. Some companies that have been private for a long time allow their employees to sell a percentage of their stock in these later private rounds.

It's not necessarily the same price you'd get on the public markets, but it can help give employees some liquidity.

Look at the valuation increases: Almost 2x year to year for quite a while. I don't expect most people seeing that kind of valuation increases looking to liquidate any part of their position unless they really can't help it.

If their fundamentals growth slowed to rates resembling the regular market, then sure, but as is, all a company with that growth rate might need is let tenured employees add, say 5% of their equity to the round so they can get a bit of liquidity to keep them quiet.

No one can predict what the price will be in a year. Diversifying before a possible recession would be prudent, especially since payment processing volume is presumably highly correlated with consumer spending.

That sounds a lot like investing based on the previous performance of the stock, which isn't a great investment strategy. I would never want a significant portion of my net worth in a single asset, regardless of how it has performed in the past.

>Look at the valuation increases: Almost 2x year to year for quite a while. I don't expect most people seeing that kind of valuation increases looking to liquidate any part of their position unless they really can't help it.

I'd rather take 2x whatever today than 0x nothing when the company folds tomorrow/in a month/in 5 years never having gone public.

So VCs can capture every bit of value before its put on the public market.

Cause it's easier to be private. Look at what wall street is doing to Tesla and ask if they wished they we still private or not.

Why should they be public?

So wallstreetbets can yolo on it, of course

It would probably be safest to stay private and ride out the weather, the public markets are not exactly fun right now.

Because they are wildly profitable already without outside capital investment. Also: much less paperwork to do.

If they're wildly profitable, why would they need this latest funding round?

Perhaps they needed some short term liquidity to make a new investment in something. Or perhaps they wanted to let some early investors/employees cash out.

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