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Comment by financiergoose | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure absurd parasitic government interference, lawfare, and shareholder activism in public corporations has nothing to do with all the good companies going private, ergo smart people telling the lawyers to go to hell, old people with pensions hardest hit.

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At this point, I'm not sure why you'd want to go public unless it's simply to cash out ASAP. Everything you just described seems like major hell to deal with.

I'm a founder, and I have zero intention of ever going public for these exact reasons.

I think we just call that a small business owner.

I would not consider Stripe to be a small business, an enterprise not considering going public (but still providing liquidity to those seeking it) [1]. Do you want to be beholden to public shareholders and potential activist investors if your money printer works without need for them? Perhaps it is more optimal to remain in control vs cashing out and have your control potentially diminished. It is okay to leave money on the table (by not going public in an attempt to maximize gains on shares held through potential public market exuberance) depending on what you are optimizing for.

[1] https://www.axios.com/2024/02/29/payments-stripe-never-go-pu...

The usual reason would be because you need a large infusion of capital to expand your successful business into a major corporation. Slow growth might be a slow death if some other bigger company gets into the space and eats your lunch. I don't disagree that too many companies go public with little plan beyond "make lots of money for the founders", but there is a time and place for it.

Going private means they don't have to disclose their financials...this is not the positive you think it is.

Heh, we (a manufacturing facility of specialized devices), just got acquired by a public company.

Due to the utter hell it's already been for meeting accounting standards they need for their financial disclosures like inventory count of fucking 1 cent screws in the warehouse needing to be perfect. Even the engineering staff had to be on hand to take part in warehouse recounts for the auditors.

The heads are already talking of cutting the entire 500 person manufacturing staff and outsourcing the manufacturing. Just because the accounting requirements are huge to run your own manufacturing as a public company.

It's easier for a public company to just outsource anything with annoying requirements to a private company who can handwave behind some paperwork.

Public companies are one reason manufacturing in the US died.

>Due to the utter hell it's already been for meeting accounting standards they need for their financial disclosures like inventory count of fucking screws in the warehouse needing to be perfect.

Surely this is done on a monthly or quarterly basis instead of a daily basis, right? As in, on day X at XX:XX time you count the screws, and call it good? Or is it more detailed than that?

Does it matter? It's a wasteful process, and not the only one that has been introduced into the parent commenter's workflow.

In a private company, you can just say "I don't care if we lose 1-cent screws, just order more when we open the last big box of them." You don't ever have to count them, unless you notice that you're spending an awful lot of money on replacing them.

In a public company that is legally required to keep track of its assets, you have to keep track of stuff that is really not worth keeping track of. Even if that's only on a periodic basis, there are literally dozens, probably hundreds of new "just one more things" you have to spend time on in a public company.

Yes, all those "one more things" keep you honest and accountable, but it has real, and rising, costs that can distort rational economic decision-making.

>it has real, and rising, costs that can distort rational economic decision-making

I'm not saying it doesn't, I'm just wondering how often it has to happen. If it's just a snapshot of inventory on one day and everything pans out, then great. If it's something that has to be tracked 365 days a year because the taxman will audit all 365 of those days, then that's a lot of effort that's being spent on something for seemingly very little benefit.

It's inventory balance. The best practice used to be that you did it yearly, but nowadays it is that you do it once, and then only when you have some reason to suspect you lost track of it.

I don't know if the US tax code is modern enough to require the new practice.

Can you be more specific about what government interference would prevent a company from wanting to go public?

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