Obligatory Matt Levine take[1] > I just want to spell it out a bit here because, again, the common story these days is that a SPAC is a substitute for an IPO t

Obligatory Matt Levine take[1] > I just want to spell it out a bit here because, again, the common story these days is that a SPAC is a substitute for an IPO that is cheaper and avoids mispricing. I have argued before that that is wrong, but in particular here I want to point out that the SPAC is (sometimes) a marriage and an IPO generally isn’t. > An IPO is, you sell stock to some people who want to buy it, and in general you hope that they’ll be good stable long-term investors, but you don’t lock them up forever. They get to vote for directors, usually, but the big IPO investors don’t generally get their own representatives on your board. And in particular, the trend in tech unicorn IPOs in recent years has been to minimize the power and input of public investors. Lots of tech unicorns go public with dual-class stock so that investors can’t really vote for directors; the founders’ goal in going public is to raise money (or at least get liquidity for early investors) but keep control of their companies for themselves. They are not looking for a marriage partner; they are looking for a transaction, for money, while keeping their independence. > Which is fine too! Some companies stay independent, some merge, some want something in between, a powerful outside shareholder who can give them advice and support. My point here is just that if you are a tech unicorn founder, and your goals are (1) to go public without giving up any control to outside public shareholders and (2) to go public without going through the vagaries of the IPO process, you may have to make some tradeoffs. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-07-24/goldman-does-a-malaysia-deal https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-07-24/goldma...