Yes, investors want their money back, but they are forbidden from doing so in an IPO, and they cannot exit for at least six months after. If, six months after

Yes, investors want their money back, but they are forbidden from doing so in an IPO, and they cannot exit for at least six months after. If, six months after the IPO, they sold all of their stock, they would most likely seriously hit the price of the stock and cause a depression in the valuation and screw the company. My post was primarily about company exit strategies, not founder exits, so I'm surprised that one paragraph stood out so much to you. Most IPOS see only about 10% of the company sold, and essentially all (literally all?) of that is newly issued stock; basically none is existing shareholders selling stock. If a successful IPO goes well afterward, then often existing shareholders will have a secondary sale about six months later (after the lock-up expires). So no, in fact, an IPO is an exit for exactly no one. Major shareholders are locked up and can't sell for at least six months, and for great companies (e.g., Google), they'll often hold even longer. I thought I made that point in my article, but apparently not.