And yet, for all of these supposed wonderful benefits that rich people gain, average venture returns have remained stubbornly mediocre for the last decade. For

And yet, for all of these supposed wonderful benefits that rich people gain, average venture returns have remained stubbornly mediocre for the last decade. For every Facebook, there is a Color and the investors in Facebook were good but they were also lucky (cf. MySpace). It's not clear that companies should be IPOing any earlier, even despite SOX. Companies seem to have an easy enough time raising on the private market and they're raising at roughly appropriate valuations, as evidenced by low VC returns. Why would a company want retail investors if they can get the same amount of cash from a couple of investment firms?