3 ms·
Exactly which of the YC companies can realistically go public? And who's going to sink that kind of money into them? You said success 98% of the time means ge
by gyro_robo 19y ago
Exactly which of the YC companies can realistically go public? And who's going to sink that kind of money into them?
You said success 98% of the time means getting bought, which means you want them to get bought, and invest on that basis. They are acquisition targets.
Nobody's going public these days, even the gigantic sites. I don't buy that investors "want" you to go public except in a "wishing for a pony" sense. If they aren't actively planning for an IPO, they're betting on a buyout, and investing on that basis, so that's what they want.
- pg 19y agoWell, there have been two funded by Sequoia (Loopt and another still unannounced), and I doubt Sequoia would touch a startup unless in their opinion it had the potential to go public. I would say off the top of my head that perhaps 5 startups of the 38 we funded prior to this round have a chance of going public one day. The fact that being bought is the most common liquidity event certainly does not mean I want that to happen. If a baseball coach tells his players that the most common type of hit is a base hit, that doesn't mean he would not prefer them to hit home runs as often as possible.
- gyro_robo 19y agoExcept you don't get points for merely getting on base -- it's not "success". And if the bases are loaded, a safe double is better than a home run with bases empty. As for Sequoia, they funded YouTube. If they had thought it could go public, why would they sell to Google? I assume because getting bought by an established company with a very strong stock status is preferable to rolling the dice -- IPOs can go straight downhill. I think it's pretty obvious that they never planned on an IPO, but instead on a bidding war between Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft (and maybe others).