[kulkarnic]

This is both amazing and scary. The amazing part is obvious.

The scary part is we now have companies that are worth a billion dollars that are unlisted and have no public scrutiny. Either a billion is not a very large number to the American people today, or we believe that public scrutiny is unnecessary for large companies today. I don't think at all that Stripe is one of them, but wouldn't a billion dollar company be a powerful entity that could invest to subvert the public interest?

[kamaal]

I'm not sure what you mean by 'public scrutiny'. Surely any common person on the street has absolutely no influence over Google or Microsoft wishes to do. And going public hardly has any influence at all.

Beyond all Companies/Organizations are not Governments, they don't collect taxes and they are not voted into power. So they are not answerable to anyone. These are individual(s) who are investing their own time, money, and on their own risks to create wealth.

[dragonwriter]

> Beyond all Companies/Organizations are not Governments

All juridical entities other than individual persons -- and this definitely includes all corporations -- are creations of government through which special privileges are given to particular individuals on the theory that by doing so some common good will be served.

[colinbartlett]

Even if that $1 Billion number was actually a revenue number and not just a "valuation", Stripe wouldn't even register in the top 300 private companies in the US:

http://www.forbes.com/largest-private-companies/list/#page:1...:

Large private companies are nothing new. Cargill has $136 Billion in annual revenue. What does Stripe have?

[brc]

> we believe that public scrutiny is unnecessary for large companies today

It's a valuation, not a statement of turnover. Makes a big, big difference.

And for the record I don't think a company requires more or less scrutiny because of the turnover or valuation.

[samstave]

Do you have any idea how big visa was as an unlisted private company for decades??

[marktangotango]

kulkarnic just arrived from 1975 when a billion was a lot of money :)