The good parts about being a public company are increased discipline, increased execution and increased transparency to make sure that you are really building a company for a hundred years.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
It's a special thing to be a public company.
I think good companies can navigate being public and doing the right things for their customers.
Clearly as you move to being a public company, probably even more than growth, there is a huge value based on predictability.
It is much more convenient not to be a public company. As a private company you don't have to give information to the public. Secrecy is an important factor of success in the commodity business.
Going public for the sake of going public is not really an optimal thing. You're going public because as a company you believe it is the right thing to do and it will benefit the ability of the company to achieve its long-term objectives.
If you're going to run a public company, be absolutely certain of what the parameters are, what the clarity is, that you can explain it to yourselves and explain it externally.
For all founders, going public is a momentous milestone that has to be experienced to be fully understood. It is the culmination of years of hard work and personal sacrifice.
If it's one thing we do really well as a company, it's that we take big change slowly and deliberately and bring the community along with us.
There's not a whole lot of advantage for a company to be public.
In my experience, there are only two valid reasons to take a company public: access to growth capital and investor fatigue.