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Comment by raw_anon_1111

1 day ago

Saying you want to control your company and you want to be around 10 years and then raising VC funding is either naive or dishonest.

VCs aren’t interested in a lifestyle business throwing them maybe a small dividend and a miniscule number of companies go public. Look at YC, they have invested in thousands of companies and only around 20 have gone public and only 3 have had positive returns since going public

https://medium.com/@Arakunrin/the-post-ipo-performance-of-y-...

The problem with that analysis is it ignores all the companies that exited through an acquisition rather than public markets.

If anything, it's an endorsement of M&A.

  • My “analysis” was the idea of a private company that seems to want to stay independent and control their own destrone like the author of the submission wants. There are only two ways to stay independent - stay private forever or go public.

    Once you take outside funding, you really have no choice but an acquisition or go public. VCs don’t want to get tiny dividend checks. Even public shareholders will insist on a sale at the right price

    • Going public doesn't keep you independent, though, unless you were already the kind of unicorn that has enough pull to own a massive amount of shares and/or a special class of them

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