[surfearth]

You seem to be insinuating that a PE exit via a sale to another fund is somehow inherently bad. Many PE investors would argue the opposite - IPOs have lockups and price volatility that increase both certainty of exit and time to exit. A sale to another PE firm or corporate entity generally deliver a large onetime cash payment.

[mrfox321]

I think he is questioning if a company or IP is valuable if it is only changing hands between funds. As opposed to, let's say, the public.

[texasbigdata]

A dual track (where you run an auction to both private and public buyers and simultaneously file an S-1 to IPO) maximizes the value to the seller. This sort of disproves the premise.