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>It wasn’t that long ago when Facebook had to get special permission from the government to stay private until they got to $100 billion.

is this true? There was the "Jumpstart Our Business Startups" (JOBS) Act, signed by Obama around that time that changed the maximum number of private investors or whatever, but was special permission given to Facebook?

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Oh I was wrong, they were forced to go public. At the time any company with $10 million in assets and 500 investors had to go public. Perhaps I misremember them trying to stay private and failing.

But the point remains, it would have been unheard of for a company 1/10 the market valuation of these companies to be private, so the public market is missing a lot of the growth phase now.

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