When I started in the business in 1999 and 2000, we had companies that were going public in two, three or four years.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I've been part of founding three companies that have gone public. It doesn't seem like a big number, but it's actually a lot.
During the 2000 bubble, many companies rushed to go public before they had any revenue.
I could imagine, some number of years from now, starting my own company. But not yet. Not for a while.
It was 1999, and we were building a way for college kids to create online profiles for the purpose of sharing... with employers. Oops. I vividly remember the moment I realized my company was going to fail. My co-founder and I were at our wits' end. By 2001, the dot-com bubble had burst, and we had spent all our money.
I started out in public service in 1998 after the Asian financial crisis of '97.
In 1986, Microsoft and Oracle went public within a day of each other, and I recall telling one of my colleagues that the software business will become big. So I started working with software companies in the mid-'80s and never turned back.
I have never run a public company. I spent my entire life working for a private company.
There was a time when I was wondering about this business of going public, so I visited about a half-dozen companies in the Boston area, all of them formed by MIT faculty and all had gone public.
It was really a very small company when I started and it changed very rapidly during those first periods.
I believe that every business and company takes two years to establish.