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Re:Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in... by aanm1988 on Thursday March 09, 2017 @02:51PM (#13832763)
> Yeah weird how people hold up IPO as a holy grail

Because employees actually gain out of it. That's also a benefit as it gives more people financial freedom and they can go off and do their own companies. Instead these people get locked in to AirBnB for years.

Re:Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in... by elastic_church on Thursday March 09, 2017 @04:10PM (#13833680)
Companies always have the option of giving dividends to common stock shareholders, buying out shareholders, simply giving bonuses or any number of things if they didn't continue to reinvest all capital and pursue losses.

Private companies even issue bonds on public bond markets, these can be as large or larger than equivalent equity offerings on the stock markets.

Don't let the mechanisms pursued by a handful of VC firms in Silicon Valley distort your understanding of capital formation.

Re:Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in... by hkmurakami on Thursday March 09, 2017 @05:45PM (#13834539)
Prime example is Cargill. $100B in revenues, privately held.

https://www.cargill.com/about/financial/credit-rating-inform...

Re:Airbnb raises $1B at $31B valuation, became profitable in... by elastic_church on Thursday March 09, 2017 @06:02PM (#13834657)
If any of these tech companies decided to just go with 6 months of positive revenues, they could issue bonds in Europe representing waaay cheaper capital than VCs and not have to worry about it for the next two decades.