[tomwheeler]

Effectively infinite. Databricks is a good example. They're still private after 13 years and closed a Series L round last year. Stripe is similar.

Having been through an IPO before, it was good for employee liquidity, but bad for the culture and long-term success of the company.

[charlie0]

Dead capital. There's no need for public funding until they are reasy to cash out at the top, if ever.

[solenoid0937]

How do investors cash out? Do they sell to new round investors?

[barbarr]

Going off the other reply, I wonder if a highly-active secondary market means that companies can raise series [A-Z]+ rounds effectively forever, where each "round" just refers to a giant purchase of shares under strict company supervision. Is this the new game for startups?

[DenisM]

If investor pool becomes too loose the company becomes de facto public, subject to all SEC-enforced regulations.

The judgment is subjective though, so pushing the boundaries could be a calculated risk.

[bix6]

Correct. There is also a secondary market.

[epolanski]

> There's no need for public funding

You're assuming private liquidity to be infinite and private credit (that fuels VCs) to always have favorable rates.

[charlie0]

When you have companies like SpaceX and Anthropic raising billions, it is hard to believe that private credit isn't virtually infinite.

[misiti3780]

so how do stripe employees get liquidity? can anyone sell their secondary shares?

[tomwheeler]

I can't speak for the specific case of Stripe, but it's fairly common for private companies to have a "tender offer" in which employees have the opportunity to sell some portion of their equity. This is often done in conjunction with a new investment round.

[Marsymars]

Outside of big tech, it's also fairly common for private companies to simply not offer equity to employees.

[toomuchtodo]

Tender offers.

https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-ba...

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/tender_offer

https://carta.com/learn/equity/liquidity-events/tender-offer...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

(secondary markets are sometimes an option, depending on stock transfer restrictions)

[Scoundreller]

Bankruptcy court?

FTX bought 8% of Anthropic for $500m in 2021.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/josipamajic/2026/03/18/ftx-owne...

[magicalhippo]

Company I worked for had a deal where I could sell back to the company at any time.

The price was determined by a formula based on revenue and such, so I always knew what they were worth.

I was not allowed to sell to anyone else though.

[jiveturkey]

There's a newish term for this: RLO, Recurring Liquidity Opportunity. These are tender offers at some recurring interval. Even some companies that have a shorter lifespan (say 7 years) offer this.

[clint]

Stripe might buy back the shares at a good price. They might be able to sell on secondary markets.

[newaccountman2]

Private/secondary markets.

[vanuatu]

regular tender offers