It likely wouldn’t be publicly traded without VC

The public market is the idealized landing spot for VC and in fact is usually the default and desired pathway for all institutionally funded companies

To the extent that startup boards choose or heavily push a specific category of CFOs in order to drive company structure that would lead to an IPO.

Go look at the employee history of a lot of startups and you’ll see they either changed CFOs or got one for the first time, after a massive B but certainly not long after a C round.

What's the difference? You still have to find a way to maximize profit at the cost of pretty much everything else. The only difference is that VCs are more willing to play the long game, whereas the stock market wants better results year over year.