>If so, why should a company like Etsy even bother to go public?
Etsy took $85m in VC funding. Those VCs want an exit. So, in my mind, they made the decision to eventually go public at the same time they made the decision to take that funding.
I do agree with your broader point "Wouldn't it have been fine to not go public?" but I think if you want to plan to not go public, you probably should bootstrap your company instead of taking VC funding.
Wouldn't it have been fine to not go public?
That is, it sounds like, regardless of whether Etsy was profitable (in the sense of producing dividends), it was at least breaking even: it was hiring as many people as it could support on revenue, but not more, and certainly not as many people as it could support on venture capital raised in exchange for equity (or worse, debt). Is that correct?
If so, why should a company like Etsy even bother to go public? What did it gain that was worth being subject to the judgment of people whose value system is that breaking even isn't a good goal?
(I got an Etsy job offer days before the layoffs. It basically sounded like the Etsy I wanted to join died that day, and I still haven't understood why the "old Etsy," pre-IPO, couldn't have lived.)