Is it unusual for a successful company like Stripe to take so long to go public? It seems like their house is in order, and they are profitable, but employees aren't liquid.
I think this is almost a case of a company being too successful. The general pattern is that you grow, you raise money, you grow, you raise money, you grow, your IPO. At each stage of growth there's a different investor. Initially you have Angels and YC style places. Then you have various stages of VC, then you finally have the public market.
What normally happens is that you become too big and that's when VCs step out of the way, you IPO and everyone takes their gains. But in the case of stripe you have $100Bn company that the VCs will still happily plough money into. So there's no reason to IPO. You can get all the liquidity you need privately. On top of that, Stripe doesn't really need capital, they aren't some uber buying market share with loss making. They are real SAAS, they can scale and see a drop in their earnings:cost ratio.
There have been liquidity events before, which allowed old enough employees to sell shares. You will find that many a former employee has managed to leave while being able to exercise their options and have a partial cash out with a lot of money to spare. So it’s not been an exercise of keeping employees tied down. A visibility one is Will Larson: You bet that he didn’t leave without being able to sell shares to cover AMT, and getting some immediate payout.
As for why stay private, what John C has said publicly is that they still see a lot of growth to go, and that not having to provide detailed financian statements to the general public, which would include competitors, is a competitive advantage. It seems believable to me.
IPO right now is very difficult as the door is closing, and investors are wary about paying a premium like they have before. They delayed it too long and have missed the window, it is unlikely from a year from now they will be able to get any bids for the current market valuations.
PC has spoken admirably of Koch Industries and he thinks there's some merit to remaining private. That's probably why. I don't have the source at hand but probably one of his podcasts.
I feel like it makes sense for Koch to stay private since their work mostly focuses on fossil fuels and specifically fracking. Public markets can be a big distraction with protests and what not. Is stripe worried about being cancelled?
Is there any reason they can't do a direct listing without selling any new shares?
The only downside for the company seems to be that employees would be able to sell, and that seems rather greedy for the company to not work in its employee's best interest.
What normally happens is that you become too big and that's when VCs step out of the way, you IPO and everyone takes their gains. But in the case of stripe you have $100Bn company that the VCs will still happily plough money into. So there's no reason to IPO. You can get all the liquidity you need privately. On top of that, Stripe doesn't really need capital, they aren't some uber buying market share with loss making. They are real SAAS, they can scale and see a drop in their earnings:cost ratio.