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Welllll.... there are hassles associated with being a public company beyond merely "people holding your feet to the fire of financials." You have to comply wi
by aetherson 10y ago
Welllll.... there are hassles associated with being a public company beyond merely "people holding your feet to the fire of financials." You have to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley, which is just a real pain in the ass, for example (source: I worked for NetSuite as they went public, and coming into compliance with SarbOx was a bunch of work).
A private funding round with a limited controlled equity buyback from employees gives you a certain amount of control that going public does not, too -- a company like AirBnB that had a broadly successful IPO would presumably mint a ton of millionaires among their employees, and I would expect to see a substantial talent drain once that happened.
But yes, I assume that "financials aren't in great shape" is the majority explanation for AirBnB's failure to go public.
- forthefuture 10y agoEven accepting all of those things, if the company was profitable and had anything in the war chest they wouldn't have to take more funding. They're either getting capital for war or survival which means what they have now isn't enough for either.
- GreenPlastic 10y agoOr capital is cheap and it doesn't hurt to raise it while you can.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ethanbond 10y agoSo strange how everyone seems to agree there's at least a bit of inflation of VC funding if not an outright bubble, yet no one seems to see why this might induce a company to take as much cheap cash as it can for the impending winter.
- mrgordon 10y agoA lot of their fundraising is for partnerships. For example, their previous round was mostly large Asian investors who could help Airbnb continue to grow internationally