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.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
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.
It's a special thing to be a public company.
With a private company, you've got to get into who's investing and what's the balance sheet like. So going public is a positive thing from the perspective of the sales organization.
You have to have in mind what you want when you go public. It's not just an end in and of itself. Suddenly, you have investors to satisfy. Investors who want - who demand - a return.
Even if a company is taken private, at some stage people want to make it public.
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.
In my experience, there are only two valid reasons to take a company public: access to growth capital and investor fatigue.
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.
All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed. That is a milestone we left a long time ago.
Well, anything you want to make public is your public business.