Companies like these are hard to find in the US because of the twin curses (or joys, depending on your views) of "maximizing shareholder value" and "SEC regulation".

If you list on a big exchange, your investors will expect revenue and profit to go brrr quarter after quarter forever. It's a treadmill you can never get off. Amazon is uniquely special in that Bezos persuaded investors to keep faith for the best part of a decade. Or perhaps "lucky": one wonders what their stock price would have done without the incredible luck of the former side hustle of AWS becoming the engine of their business. (Not to denigrate the incredible feat that it is, or the work that went into it.)

Regulation provides some practical limits on how small you can be, too. All those 10-Ks and audits and SOX compliance don't come cheap. You need to be big enough to employ specialists to do it or rich enough to partner up with Deloitte.

The alternative is to list on a pink sheet exchange, but then you are keeping company with a long long tail of companoes that give off sketchy vibes. A one man Nevada corporation selling healing oils, or an interest in a hitherto-undiscovered source of limitless energy. I cant think of any company that graduated from this part of the market into full DJI/Nasdaq respectability. Maybe someone knows of one?

>> The alternative is to list on a pink sheet exchange

Nah, there's OTC which is different than pink sheet. There's a couple of levels of OTC above that, between the pink sheets and the exchange traded stocks.

Plenty of OTC stocks have graduated, plenty of respectable stocks have gone from exchange traded to penny stock status and back.

Pink sheet stocks though? I don't know. Who buys those? Postmen? There's always postmen.

> investors will expect revenue and profit to go brrr quarter after quarter forever. It's a treadmill you can never get off.

When you have money to place somewhere, it is natural to look for a place that gives you a great return. Since share price is a function of future expected earnings, it stands to reason that the company will try to grow earnings for the shareholders (since they, collectively, own the company).

> If you list on a big exchange, your investors will expect revenue and profit to go brrr quarter after quarter forever. It's a treadmill you can never get off.

> or an interest in a hitherto-undiscovered source of limitless energy.

Doesn't sound so different actually :)

Other than potentially scummy stuff what even is the benefit to a small company listing on a pink sheet exchange?