I guess I “won” the lottery working for one of the companies going public but all of these names have been highly visibly for nearly the whole past decade and an option anyone could have considered over a big corporate job.
You're making a distinction without difference. I literally had no idea whether the company I work for was even going to go public, much less how successful (or not) it would have been. There was no skill or intelligence involved in picking it. It was pure luck.
Thank you for setting me straight. Of course there are many
privately-held companies that existed for decades and never took public money.
I would bet that most of these companies were created decades ago and that most of the recent "success stories" took public money at some point - anybody knows any examples?
Large private companies do exist. For a mature, profitable company the benefits of being public generally outweigh the costs, but there's plenty of room for diversity here.
why would you work at a company that may never go public and even if it does, already has such an oversized valuation you’ll likely not make much from it?
it seems predatory and abusive to employees to stay private this long
I think the most compelling reason for a company to go public now is that it means they can off recruits liquid equity.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the recent wave of filings was partially driven by a sense that star employees were being poached by FAANGS that could effectively pay double, mostly on account of being public.
Or a public company that took it in the chin over the last 4 months. With public companies you get the market price at the first board meeting after hiring, and you don't take quite as much risk of your stock being totally worthless as you would with a down round or unknown company.
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