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"Everyone's being told, 'Don't go public,'" Ries said. "The most common conventional wisdom now is that going public will mean the end of your ability to innova

"Everyone's being told, 'Don't go public,'" Ries said. "The most common conventional wisdom now is that going public will mean the end of your ability to innovate." I thought no one went public because going public requires you to divulge revenues.

ng12 10y ago
Stop it you're breaking the narrative.
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
Because they're too busy chasing the QER.
bduerst 10y ago
Maybe. I worked for a time with Epic Systems, which is an EMR company that saw record growth in the 2000's, and they're still privately traded today because they didn't want to focus on the bottom line. Anyone in the know could possibly argue that the CEO is also a control freak, but she's used that control to keep the company focused on a high-quality/safe user experience for patients, which isn't a bad thing IMO.
- siculars 10y ago
  ...and monopolistic control over that EMR via no HL7 integration.
  - bduerst 10y ago
    Epic Bridges sends/receives HL7 messages to just about any software with an interface. I'm not sure what you're talking about.
    - casparz 10y ago
      In addition to that, they are well underway to supporting HL7 FHIR (the new version of HL7).
      - siculars 10y ago
        When I can do bidirectional programmatic interface to Epic let me know. I won't hold my breath.
    - eonw 10y ago
      I wasn't on the team that implemented this at a large healthcare provider, but i remember that team bitched about it a lot. its also mentioned as a compliant on EPICs wikipedia article.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - bduerst 10y ago
        That's because healthcare interfaces are terribly difficult to work with, because they're the worst of two worlds - mountains of bureaucracy mixed with different tech stacks from different eras.
        siculars 10y ago
        You don't have to search too hard to read horror stories about interfacing with Epic. In practice EMR vendors are financially disincentivized from interfacing with anyone. To your point, why, specifically, is it so difficult to interface with these systems? Could it be by design?
        bduerst 10y ago
        Right, because you're searching for stories about interfacing with Epic and they have 50% of the patient marketshare. That's how appeals to popularity work. You still didn't elaborate on why you said Epic has no HL7 integration.
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  I also worked at Epic for a while; CEO was definitely a control freak at that time. I consider it very likely that she has not changed in that respect. I was promised employee stock at hiring. The company shortly thereafter reneged and substituted a "shadow stock" plan. The rationale I was given explicitly mentioned that having too many private stockholders would trigger mandatory financial reporting, and that the company would rather give me the finger than its balance sheet. It was just one of the many reasons why I left. The company was fueled entirely by the inherent brokenness of the US health care complex. It seemed to be metaphorically powered by shoveling fat stacks of $100 bills directly into the fireboxes of pre-Watt Newcomen steam engines. They didn't even bother with the seemingly simple expedient of converting the $100 bills into $1 bills to increase the available fuel supply. The end product that was visible to the customer was good, but it almost certainly cost several orders of magnitude more to produce it than was strictly necessary.
  - stephencanon 10y ago
    > The end product that was visible to the customer was good This would be news to my wife (a surgeon), or any one of her coworkers. The software is universally viewed as terrible by everyone I've talked to. It actively results in worse records because (at least as configured) it's so cumbersome to use that many notes are frequently kept out of the system. A management plan that takes seconds to explain verbally requires minutes of data entry.
    - bduerst 10y ago
      The thing about Epic Hyperspace is that it's polarizing for those who work in the medical profession. You either love it or you hate it, and the physicians who hate it typically hate it because of what you said - they're suddenly having to type their own notes into a computer rather than dictate it to someone else. Personally I'm of the opinion that doctors doing their own data entry is better for liability and malpractice reasons, but I empathize with your wife and people who hate doing it.
      - stephencanon 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
aptwebapps 10y ago
Divulging revenues is not bad in and of itself, but when executive compensation is tied to market performance you have a problem. LTSE, as described in the article, is doing a lot more to combat that problem than just being long term.
ngoede 10y ago
I have heard that there is the impression that the values they have gotten from private investors(i.e. VC) are higher than they would get on the open market. Which means either VCs are much better at investing than the market at large or there is a bubble(or a bit of both).
Avshalom 10y ago
Accounting innovation is still innovation.
xal 10y ago
> "Everyone's being told, 'Don't go public,'" Ries said. In my experience, If there is consensus around something, it's often a great idea to do the opposite. I decided to take my company public last year and it has been exactly the right thing for us. As far as I can see it, there is absolutely no reason to wait if your company and your team is ready.
- madeofpalk 10y ago
  > if your company and your team is ready. And what does that look like?
  - xal 10y ago
    Right, that's the key question. In my case, it just felt that way one day. Running a Public company looks like a daunting task before you are ready, and it doesn't look like a big deal after you are ready. Building a company is a journey of personal growth, at some point your personal growth as a leader takes you past the point where a IPO looks daunting. Then you make your move.
- swalsh 10y ago
  With a tiny chance you might answer, I'm curious.. how did Shopify come about? Did you start an eCommerce store yourself, have bad luck, but then say "hey we could take all this tech we just built and sell that instead"? Or was shopify always the goal?
  - xal 10y ago
    Exactly as you said. I build a online store to sell Snowboards back in 2004. The business worked really well but the software was clearly even better. The snowboards ended up financing building Shopify. The first checkin into the Shopify git repository was the first checkin to the original online store (although I used Darcs as SCM back then, I converted the history over to Git ). We actually put together a mini documentary about Shopify for our IPO Roadshow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYl8iwD-6tk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYl8iwD-6tk It's worth the watch if you are into this kind of thing. We decided to do this because Shopify grew out outside of the Silicon Valley sphere and wasn't that well known before our IPO. That has clearly changed since.
ProfChronos 10y ago
I guess it's not only a matter of revenues. I don't think Uber really cares about divulging revenue - they've done it over the last months for some geographies to prove they're right. I think they care more about where the focus must be = if you're private, you can keep growing without thinking too much about the bottom line/EBIT/EBITDA; when you're public, that's another story, investors (not only individuals) carry about dividends to make their ROI - of course value of the stock is another key element
xhrpost 10y ago
http://www.vox.com/2014/6/26/5837638/the-ipo-is-dying-marc-andreessen-explains-why http://www.vox.com/2014/6/26/5837638/the-ipo-is-dying-marc-a...
the_watcher 10y ago
Those two things are related: oftentimes, being innovative in ways that might, in the future, unlock huge revenue opportunities, can make short term revenues look pretty bad. Imagine Google reporting revenue prior to the launch of AdWords.

ng12 10y ago

Stop it you're breaking the narrative.

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

Because they're too busy chasing the QER.

bduerst 10y ago

Maybe. I worked for a time with Epic Systems, which is an EMR company that saw record growth in the 2000's, and they're still privately traded today because they didn't want to focus on the bottom line. Anyone in the know could possibly argue that the CEO is also a control freak, but she's used that control to keep the company focused on a high-quality/safe user experience for patients, which isn't a bad thing IMO.

siculars 10y ago
...and monopolistic control over that EMR via no HL7 integration.
- bduerst 10y ago
  Epic Bridges sends/receives HL7 messages to just about any software with an interface. I'm not sure what you're talking about.
  - casparz 10y ago
    In addition to that, they are well underway to supporting HL7 FHIR (the new version of HL7).
    - siculars 10y ago
      When I can do bidirectional programmatic interface to Epic let me know. I won't hold my breath.
  - eonw 10y ago
    I wasn't on the team that implemented this at a large healthcare provider, but i remember that team bitched about it a lot. its also mentioned as a compliant on EPICs wikipedia article.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - bduerst 10y ago
      That's because healthcare interfaces are terribly difficult to work with, because they're the worst of two worlds - mountains of bureaucracy mixed with different tech stacks from different eras.
      - siculars 10y ago
        You don't have to search too hard to read horror stories about interfacing with Epic. In practice EMR vendors are financially disincentivized from interfacing with anyone. To your point, why, specifically, is it so difficult to interface with these systems? Could it be by design?
        bduerst 10y ago
        Right, because you're searching for stories about interfacing with Epic and they have 50% of the patient marketshare. That's how appeals to popularity work. You still didn't elaborate on why you said Epic has no HL7 integration.
logfromblammo 10y ago
I also worked at Epic for a while; CEO was definitely a control freak at that time. I consider it very likely that she has not changed in that respect. I was promised employee stock at hiring. The company shortly thereafter reneged and substituted a "shadow stock" plan. The rationale I was given explicitly mentioned that having too many private stockholders would trigger mandatory financial reporting, and that the company would rather give me the finger than its balance sheet. It was just one of the many reasons why I left. The company was fueled entirely by the inherent brokenness of the US health care complex. It seemed to be metaphorically powered by shoveling fat stacks of $100 bills directly into the fireboxes of pre-Watt Newcomen steam engines. They didn't even bother with the seemingly simple expedient of converting the $100 bills into $1 bills to increase the available fuel supply. The end product that was visible to the customer was good, but it almost certainly cost several orders of magnitude more to produce it than was strictly necessary.
- stephencanon 10y ago
  > The end product that was visible to the customer was good This would be news to my wife (a surgeon), or any one of her coworkers. The software is universally viewed as terrible by everyone I've talked to. It actively results in worse records because (at least as configured) it's so cumbersome to use that many notes are frequently kept out of the system. A management plan that takes seconds to explain verbally requires minutes of data entry.
  - bduerst 10y ago
    The thing about Epic Hyperspace is that it's polarizing for those who work in the medical profession. You either love it or you hate it, and the physicians who hate it typically hate it because of what you said - they're suddenly having to type their own notes into a computer rather than dictate it to someone else. Personally I'm of the opinion that doctors doing their own data entry is better for liability and malpractice reasons, but I empathize with your wife and people who hate doing it.
    - stephencanon 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

aptwebapps 10y ago

Divulging revenues is not bad in and of itself, but when executive compensation is tied to market performance you have a problem. LTSE, as described in the article, is doing a lot more to combat that problem than just being long term.

ngoede 10y ago

I have heard that there is the impression that the values they have gotten from private investors(i.e. VC) are higher than they would get on the open market. Which means either VCs are much better at investing than the market at large or there is a bubble(or a bit of both).

Avshalom 10y ago

Accounting innovation is still innovation.

xal 10y ago

> "Everyone's being told, 'Don't go public,'" Ries said. In my experience, If there is consensus around something, it's often a great idea to do the opposite. I decided to take my company public last year and it has been exactly the right thing for us. As far as I can see it, there is absolutely no reason to wait if your company and your team is ready.

madeofpalk 10y ago
> if your company and your team is ready. And what does that look like?
- xal 10y ago
  Right, that's the key question. In my case, it just felt that way one day. Running a Public company looks like a daunting task before you are ready, and it doesn't look like a big deal after you are ready. Building a company is a journey of personal growth, at some point your personal growth as a leader takes you past the point where a IPO looks daunting. Then you make your move.
swalsh 10y ago
With a tiny chance you might answer, I'm curious.. how did Shopify come about? Did you start an eCommerce store yourself, have bad luck, but then say "hey we could take all this tech we just built and sell that instead"? Or was shopify always the goal?
- xal 10y ago
  Exactly as you said. I build a online store to sell Snowboards back in 2004. The business worked really well but the software was clearly even better. The snowboards ended up financing building Shopify. The first checkin into the Shopify git repository was the first checkin to the original online store (although I used Darcs as SCM back then, I converted the history over to Git ). We actually put together a mini documentary about Shopify for our IPO Roadshow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYl8iwD-6tk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYl8iwD-6tk It's worth the watch if you are into this kind of thing. We decided to do this because Shopify grew out outside of the Silicon Valley sphere and wasn't that well known before our IPO. That has clearly changed since.

ProfChronos 10y ago

I guess it's not only a matter of revenues. I don't think Uber really cares about divulging revenue - they've done it over the last months for some geographies to prove they're right. I think they care more about where the focus must be = if you're private, you can keep growing without thinking too much about the bottom line/EBIT/EBITDA; when you're public, that's another story, investors (not only individuals) carry about dividends to make their ROI - of course value of the stock is another key element

xhrpost 10y ago

http://www.vox.com/2014/6/26/5837638/the-ipo-is-dying-marc-andreessen-explains-why http://www.vox.com/2014/6/26/5837638/the-ipo-is-dying-marc-a...

the_watcher 10y ago

Those two things are related: oftentimes, being innovative in ways that might, in the future, unlock huge revenue opportunities, can make short term revenues look pretty bad. Imagine Google reporting revenue prior to the launch of AdWords.