> I thought all companies above a certain size were publicly traded. ...Wait, do I have some incorrect definition of publicly traded? Size doesn't really matte

> I thought all companies above a certain size were publicly traded. ...Wait, do I have some incorrect definition of publicly traded? Size doesn't really matter. I suppose you could say size and public status are correlated. Companies who are publicly traded have gone through an IPO and their shares are available for purchase at stock exchanges. For instance Uber is large but not publicly traded. If a large company isn't publicly traded it is a private company. I don't think "private equity company" is a term in wide use, but a private company has private equity that is available for VC and private equity firms to invest in. As a HN user you may be familiar with how VCs work? VC can be thought of as a subsection of the PE industry.