I'm sure they already have more than the 500 non-accredited or 2000 accredited shareholder total that would trigger most of those reporting requirements anyways. So Stripe already has most of the drawbacks of being a public company without the benefits.

The reporting isn’t the drawbacks of being public, it’s the investors.

They get to _choose_ who they let in if they are private (by definition).

They don’t need the public’s money and don’t want the headache of dealing with the public. I’d completely agree if I were them.

Disclaimer: ex-stripe who is still an investor.

The vast majority of public shareholders don't vote their shares. A VC is much more likely to apply unwanted pressure to the board/management than the general public is.

IMO, the best reason to avoid an IPO is to stay out of the media.

The VC likely already has ownership, and a board seat - public companies are susceptible to activist-investors and hostile bids: outsiders who hold little/no stake, but an outsized influence.

Neither of which would be relevant in the Stripe case, because if Stripe IPO's they'll release a negligible number of shares. It'd be impossible for either group to amass a substantial number of shares.

Why do an IPO at all, if they will release a "negligible number of shares"?

A low liquidity IPO would likely result in a massive share price increase: the number of interested buyers would vastly outnumber the number of shares available.

So what? If you’re selling a low amount of shares, you are still generating a low amount of input to the company.

If it neither needs money nor guidance, then why IPO? The owners already have enough of both.

Harder for activist investors to get into a private company than a public one imho. Keeps out those who would squeeze the business and bail, and potentially kick out the founders. With sufficient cashflow (which Stripe most certainly has), you can buy out existing investors without going public.

(not ex-Stripe, but own startup equity and have no problem with them never going public if that is the choice; optimize for the enterprise and existing stakeholders, not the public market mechanics broadly speaking)

You'd need to amass 50% of the shares to kick out the founders. That'd be impossible for a hostile party to do if Stripe IPO's because they wouldn't release anywhere close to that number of shares.

The only way to kick out the Collison's would be for the VC's to do it. They currently own 80%. It's easier for the VC's to do that if Stripe stays private than if Stripe IPO's.

How do you know if they do/don't have a dual-class share structure?

Do very many companies provide daily liquidity? Most of my time getting RSUs have had trading windows, once a quarter if you're lucky.

When I was an employee of a subsidiary of Infospace, my RSUs were always worthless (honestly, I don't remember if any vested while I was there), at Yahoo, we could generally trade, although one shouldn't trade immediately after earnings, but I don't remember if this was enforced at the affiliated brokerage. At Facebook, I think it was typically a three week window every quarter.

Of course, if you quit, the windows are no longer in force, although if you have material non-public information, you're still not allowed to trade. Maybe there'a a share price where you'd rather quit and sell than hold on until the window opens.

The latest self funded tenders have been pretty tiny. I wouldn’t term it as “liquidity” as much as a symbolic gesture.

AFAIK none of the recent tenders have been self-funded. They’ve matched external investors who want shares with employees.

Also, not sure what you mean by "tiny". It's been billions of dollars.

Also ex-Stripe. This suggests an opportunity to build an exchange that addresses these problems. Could one build an exchange with deliberate "turn-based" liquidity to avoid the problem of daily stock price distraction, for example? (This is hard because there will always be secondary markets, but presumably this is already the case.)

I get the feeling that the founders will not bend and invest for long term and not quarterly, as a non ex-stripe at least judging by their patience to IPO

I'd say it has advantages and disadvantages.

One advantage is that whales can't play around with the stock price, say VCs dumping stocks at an unfortunate moment and putting pressure on the price. But it's also just wall street folks doing price manipulation for options schemes that can be an issue (it's illegal but has low enforcement if you are rich and well connected). Also lower chance of activist investors, and less of a quarterly pressure to show nice numbers, etc.

The advantage is also a disadvantage: minority shareholders of non-public companies have much less rights than those of public ones, and that includes employees. That's part of why you are dependent on the founder's goodwill on whether a startup exit can screw over rank and file employees or not. I'm not sure how much that danger is still out there if the company is doing tender offers, but it might still exist actually. Similarly, you can structure tender offers in a way that say former employees are disadvantaged, and many other arbitrary criteria.

Note that this depends greatly on the jurisdiction, e.g. in Germany there is legislation that's unfriendly to minority shareholders even for public companies, e.g. visible in the Varta takeover, imo part of why the idea of adding stocks to pensions will be ripe for money grabbing schemes of whales against the smaller owners.

Also employee of private company with tender offers, but not Stripe. Opinions my own.