[nostromo]

Going public early in a company’s life used to be pretty normal. Only in recent decades has it become the norm to wait to go public until late in a company’s growth.

I think going public early is better. VC’s and insiders have been capturing the lion’s share of early-stage growth returns. If companies go public earlier, more of that growth will be accessible to more investors.

[anonisko]

I have a paranoid fear that keeping companies private MUCH longer than previously normal will be the status quo going forward now that the general public has easy access to active stock trading.

A truly open market strips away a lot of the advantage insiders and old money have enjoyed for a long time, and keeping growth companies in the private market is a way to prolong that privilege.

[anonisko]

I should add, keeping companies private could also be a scheme for throwing a wrench into the rising calls for a wealth tax. How you value property that has no liquid market (like private company shares) is one of the issues that makes a wealth tax extremely difficult to implement in practice.

[marvin]

This is already the status quo, and has been for many years now. There are only rare examples today where companies that have a plausible prospect of growing >100X, go public before this growth happens.

I'm inclined to agree with you that defending some sort of insider advantage is part of the reason, along with expensive regulations and avoiding manipulative, activist speculative behavior.

[trimbo]

A $24bn public valuation without a product for sale has to be off the charts as "going public early", though, right? Amazon raised, what, $50M or $100M in its IPO (and is what I'd consider an early one)?

[molyss]

you mean versus having a product that loses money ?

Uber was losing between $1B and $5B a quarter when they IPO'd. In the last quarter of 2020, Uber lost close to $1B, and they're still valued at $108B, with no real long term plan for survivability. The way I see it, risks include legislative changes WRT driver status, bad press, self driving cars, a post pandemic world where more people own a car, and less people are in cities. And we're talking about a company that is primarily marketing and software, where the wind can change very quickly, and assets are mostly intangible and untransferable.

car manufacturing is much harder to get into, so having a factory and an almost-complete design is already a huge milestone. Obviously, they'll need to sell _some_ cars, but they could even make money if they were to sell cars at a loss, through carbon credits.

[nostromo]

Pets.com went public the year after incorporating. The year after that they liquidated. (Granted... those were crazy times we probably don’t need to replicate.)

[trimbo]

At least I got this sock puppet dog out of it

(Yes, for real, I have one)