Facebook was 8 years old when they went public. Google did so after 6 years. Apple was basically a toddler at 4.5 years.
Here are the top 15 most "in-demand" private companies. What do you notice about them?
...yea, they're old.
On average 11 years old.
(BTW, most in-demand in this case means they were the top 15 companies in the activity list from Notice, which tracks secondary market trading for private tech. Basically these are the companies that have a lot of people wanting to buy their shares even though they aren't public).
Yes, those were different eras, private markets weren't nearly as mature, etc etc.
But this "forever private" dynamic is fueling so much of the change around VC these days.
It changes things for founders. They need to plan for a 15-year journey, they need to manage equity burn, they (often) need to factor in higher total dilution.
It changes things for employees. They need to discount their expected equity value by a longer period of time. They need to understand their equity rights (and understand that even if things go great, they could maybe be left with not very much).
It changes things for investors. They need bigger winners if they don't see liquidity for 15 years.
And of course the broad public market does not get to benefit from significant growth spurts in our most exciting companies.
I'm not saying this is by default good or bad. Just that doubling one single stat (length of time companies remain private) changes the entire equation for all private market participants.
Different game these days!
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