4 ms·

I spoke to a guy recently who works for a company doing $300 million revenue/year as a wholesale distributor of internet networking equipment (think finger opti

• hnick 6y ago
  > The company is privately owned and not venture backed so you'll never hear of them unless you are in that business. Is the implication that venture backing needs growth so they get heavily involved in the media circus? I suppose that makes sense. I've always liked these "shadow industries", I've run into a few personally looking for things like special cut metal or wholesale pie crust or curtain rails.
  • chadash 6y ago
    Venture capitalists are often looking for billion dollar companies. If you found a company and grow it organically to where it's worth $25 million, then sure, you are no Bezos, but you are fairly successful (financially) by any standard. But venture capital doesn't care about $25 million companies, because their business model involves investing in so many companies that fail that a $25m success doesn't really move the needle for them. They want to see B's not M's in their companies' valuations. Meanwhile, the media doesn't have much to work with when reporting on privately held, non-venture backed companies. There's no official valuation unless the company sells (sure, once you get to be the size of Cargill or Bloomberg, reporters will try to calculate some sort of valuation, but very few companies fall in this category), and the owners typically have no good reason to want publicity from the media, especially if they are selling B2B.