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Comment by sbierwagen | Hacker News Reader

>and then list it on the stock market for the retail traders to hold their bags.

Out of 3,840 startups funded by YC, fifteen have gone public: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies

That's 0.39%, not sure if this is typical but seems pretty low to me. Anything we can learn from this number, or it's simply just a number?

It's widely discussed in the industry. I like the Matt Levine hypothesis titled "Private markets are the new public markets", briefly stated: that for a while there was a lot more money available for private companies than there used to be, thanks to ZIRP and megafunds like Softbank VF, and also more regulations and disclosures imposed on public companies, which on net makes it more attractive to stay private and not go public https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2020-08-05/money-...

Very informative, thanks for sharing. I guess one of the assumptions behind this is the overall economy is good so the private companies can raise funding easily without going public. Emm but on a second thought, it shouldn't matter when economy is good as companies can always raise funding easily no matter from private equality or public, vice versa, companies may find challenging to raise money when economy is downturn no matter from private or public. So, maybe what you mentioned are the main reasons.

The cynical would assume firms financials the hyper-efficient public markets would mock prefer to swindle uneducated private investors.

The public markets are fucking stupid. A good company is managed for the next 25 years while a public company has to be managed for the next quarter. This is why private equity investing, including angel investing, beats the socks off of public marketing investing if you know what you're doing (barring access to things like public market manipulation capabilities or insider information)

True. But the money is too good on the public markets

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