The fees are actually the same between a traditional IPO as well as a direct listing. We ended up paying $15M or so all in between everyone. The reason some banks push you to a traditional IPO is that their real clients- public market investors like hedge funds who to repeat business with them, get a good deal on your stock.
I heard all the expected ones: not having control over your price, wanting a monotonically increasing stock price, having the price trade up on the opening for good press. It's all bullshit, if you read any of the coverage on Amplitude we were able to achieve all the goals we wanted to: https://www.google.com/search?q=amplitude&tbm=nws
My absolute favorite argument was that if you price too high, you price out people who will stick with you, and that will cause your price to be lower in the future than it would have been otherwise. Luckily, I did a year in the finance world in high frequency trading so they couldn't pull this one on me. That logic is the opposite of how pricing in a market works. High prices now are a signal that prices in the future are expected to be higher. If you want your price to be higher in the future, having it be higher in the present will increase the likelihood of that outcome. The thinking reminded me of Yogi Berra's famous quote: "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."
I know a bunch of other companies planning to go public were watching our direct listing to see if it was a viable path and I hope our results convince them. Please reach out if you're a CEO and trying to figure this out!