Makes me wonder why Auth0's board of directors agreed to the sale.
Business hasn't been about the long term for a while, especially if you're a startup. The goal is to gain recognition and sell at the first good chance you get... rinse, repeat.
You only need to look at what happened to Sears and K-Mart to know that what people look for in value of a company is what you can sell off, not how well you can compete.
once you hit a certain level, you run out of buyers, and thus lose much of your ability to sell at multiples over value... so effective price ceiling.
There's always salesforce :).
No, thank you for a cogent analysis; interesting to me how the incentives shift as you grow and how an IPO can be riskier than a sale.
not a lot of buyers at that level, so as soon as > $1B, and bought for way more than 10X on revenue, so unclear if/when they'd see $6B again. capital is cheap right now too, and while interest rates are expected to stay low for 3+ yr, in reality no one knows as the current situation is confusing economists...
He said, expecting the answer, "no."