[amirmc]

"If you can get $200 million from private sources, then yeah, I don’t want my company under the scrutiny of the unwashed masses who don’t understand my business," said Danielle Morrill"

Wow. I get that private money is easier to deal with but disparaging the public markets as 'unwashed masses' seems rather uncouth. I expect leading a public company requires quite a different skill-set than a private company and the 'scrutiny' is a necessary part of that (information release etc).

[virmundi]

Public share holders are, statistically, unwashed masses [1]. It's a bunch of quants that look at your P/E Ratio, earnings, etc to figure out if you're a good bet. If not quants, they're just people following some stock trend and bitching when it doesn't move up all the time. Few people take the time to get to know your business, your goals and your history. It's this lack of insight and depth that's led to the problem that modern companies have, which is only looking out for this and the next quarters' profits.

We see it with Amazon. That company has goals. It has expensive goals. Sometimes it doesn't make money for a few quarters. Ever damn time there is minor hullabaloo about how Amazon needs to focus on making money. They should cut jobs. Get more automation. Stop working in various Cloud offerings. Reduce their R&D. All of this is because a company shouldn't, apparently, focus on 5 to 10 year plans.

If I ever get out of my depression and really work on my startup, I won't IPO on anything that I actually care about. I'll plow through the early years living like a college student on Ramen if I have to. Then the company is mine to do with as I please. I know that there will be policies that won't please the market (for example 10% of the net to charity, primarily local to Palatka and Putnam county Fl).

I'm glad to see a possible trend in the tech industry of becoming entrepreneurs rather than rock stars. Don't get me wrong, I bet fame and its trappings are fun. Unfortunately they don't seem to really benefit the company or the product.

1 - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/unwashed_masses

[crucialfelix]

I would say that's just a careless joke.

The real issue is that for small caps, startups, tech, solar etc. stock markets are basically casinos. Any little murmur or rumor is an excuse to dump the price 20% in a day and then after everybody is scared shitless buy the thing back.

I used to day trade quite a bit and I can assure you that the majority of the people trading these companies don't know or care what the business is. These days many of them are robots.

So if you are trying to build a business then you want calmer long term hands to prevail, not traders.

[mikehawkins]

Yup. I can imagine also the ease of having to only deal with a limited pool of private funders - all of whom are known quantities vs. faceless public funds - would be also be a key benefit.

[vvvv]

Running a private company is significantly cheaper and less onerous than running a public one.

Stock market volatility resulting from irrationality of certain classes of investors (% weight depending on the sector), in extreme cases, can break even a healthy company.

[bsbechtel]

How so? It can only break the company if you're raising additional capital post-IPO. If you're not raising additional capital, your stock price and the volatility surrounding it are only a number that a stakeholder decides to sell at. It has nothing to do with your company's operational capabilities.

[count]

Depends on how many of your companies shares are held by the current board and management team...

Nothing breaks a company faster than switching out senior leaders every few months.

[bsbechtel]

If your senior leadership is leaving because of short term volatility in their options, is that really the senior leadership you want in your company?

In addition, senior leadership has significantly less liquidity in their options in a privately held company.

[Scarblac]

I think he meant that the shareholders will replace the senior leadership because of short term volatility, unless you only sell a minority to the public.

[JesperRavn]

Yes, the accountability of public companies to their shareholders is useful and important. Private investors also subject the companies they own to scrutiny too. Sometimes the unwashed masses don't understand your business. But sometimes they do, and they've just decided your business is wasting money. There is no simple answer because it always boils down to human judgement at some level.

[mattmanser]

It's a disturbing trend in tech that's going on.

Here's an upvoted, but vile, close-minded, comment from another thread:

The [general populace] are lazy, and if given money, will sit watching reality TV and stuffing their face with ice cream.

The arrogance of techies is getting obscene, but the reality is we lucked out on enjoying mucking around with computers and now we're starting to believe we deserved it all along...

[user_0001]

A generalisation no doubt, but you are blinded if you cannot see some truth in the statement.

Nor is it a view held only by "techies".

The sit down, do nothing, consume group of the general population is large. There is a lot of money in keeping them as they are.

[doctorshady]

If this is true on a wide scale, it kinda gives some merit to the anti-Silicon Valley types running around the Bay Area.

[benihana]

I find it interesting that two quotes from individuals is enough to get you to think all techies think the same.

[mattmanser]

They're examples, it's more a reflection of the general tone of the discussion the last few years.

[michaelochurch]

I'm pretty negative on tech-industry arrogance, but I sympathize with Danielle's position. It may just be that I've known about her from before and that she's one of the few tech leaders whom I actually like.

What she's saying about "scrutiny of unwashed masses who don't understand my business" hits the mark. With "unwashed masses", she's not complaining about average, 100-IQ Americans who'd rather go fishing than run tech companies. No one (who's worth taking seriously) has a problem with such people. She's complaining about the management consultants and serial board members who haven't actually done anything for 20 years who (because they think they're intellectual leaders, when they're not) toss out imbecilic suggestions like "Cut R&D, set up stack ranking, and give a speech about 'tough culture' to scare people" when the Q2 numbers come out a little soft. There are a lot of utter fucking morons in the business world with a hell of a lot of influence and power. Some are in tech, some are outside of it; but it's true that when you go public, the probability that drooling rubes will have the power and influence to force your hand on "tough decisions", when you should actually be leading from the front and doubling down on R&D and morale, goes up.

"Unwashed masses" isn't quite the right phrase, because it suggests low social class when the actual enemy is people of high social class and power who think they have intelligence and vision (rather than luck and social connection) to match it, but who are actually drooling, anti-intellectual, sheepish morons. Still, I agree strongly with her sentiment. Everything she's saying is valid. Where she and I may disagree is on the locus of the morons. I think that most of technology's leadership is just as bad as the mainstream business leadership (and I'm not sure that I buy into the distinction). Lucas Duplan and Evan Spiegel and Travis Kalanich weren't shit onto this world by Fenrir. Someone decided to make them founders. Their existence is testament to the existence of drooling rubes in the VC ranks. The difference isn't in the average quality of people (most VCs are fucking morons, just as most management consultants are) but in the number of people to whom you're accountable. If you're private, you're accountable to a couple lead VCs and there's a chance (less than 50% by definition, because most decision-makers are drooling rubes everywhere, but probably greater than 5%) that you got lucky and drew people who are actually worth a damn. If you're public, you're accountable to a much larger number of people, most of whom are talentless and overpaid and full of themselves, and you end up gaming short-term stats in order to keep them off your back.