[adam_arthur]

They should've IPOed when valuations went into massive bubble territory in 2020/2021... have to wonder what kind of logic they were using to wait so long.

If you can IPO at a ~100x sales multiple, what more do you really need? Hard to feel sorry for those that chose to stay private for a decade+ while the getting was good

[dilyevsky]

> have to wonder what kind of logic they were using to wait so long.

It’s called greed. And also private money was incredibly cheap so why bother with reporting requirements that come with an IPO

[Rastonbury]

Same could be said of anyone in tech who held onto vested RSU in 2021/early 2022, which I think is a majority. Greed is human

[toast0]

It's generally hard to do anything with vested RSUs in a non-public company. For one, they often require time and a liquidity event in order to vest; but even if they were vested into shares, it's hard to sell non-public shares.

[treffer]

I am partially gussing here, but...

They weren't old enough by 2020/early 2021. Series A was 2012. It's usually 10 years after that you need to IPO.

So the expected IPO would be 2022. Bad timing/luck.

Similar for those option plans. Planned IPO +2 years should OK. Unless it hits you like the last 2 years.

[looping__lui]

Can you provide specific data points and examples for this 10 year hypothesis?

[thebigspacefuck]

Check page 5 of this doc https://site.warrington.ufl.edu/ritter/files/IPOs-Age.pdf

Around year 2000 median age was 4 years, 2001-2009 was 8-9 years and since 2008 median age has been 9-14 years with the majority more than 10 years.

[treffer]

This is the normal runtime of venture funds.

I am not sure if the last chapters of "The hard thing about hard things" or "Venture Deals" had more details.

So you can expect Series A with fresh funds and money (10 years runtime left).

[looping__lui]

So 7 years would have “been to early” (e.g., like Meta did it and we all know how that ended…)? Or 5 years in the case of Google? Or 2 years for Amazon?

[carlivar]

Could it be a regulatory compliance issue? Maybe they couldn't get their accounting affairs in order.

[sintaxi]

I suspect the regulatory compliance is not easy to meet for their business.