Oh I was wrong, they were forced to go public. At the time any company with $10 million in assets and 500 investors had to go public. Perhaps I misremember them

Oh I was wrong, they were forced to go public. At the time any company with $10 million in assets and 500 investors had to go public. Perhaps I misremember them trying to stay private and failing. But the point remains, it would have been unheard of for a company 1/10 the market valuation of these companies to be private, so the public market is missing a lot of the growth phase now.