An IPO means selling a whole bunch of people, whereas fundraising rounds pre-IPO mean courting a small number of large investors. I think it's partly a sign of the times that there's enough concentrated capital that you can get enough money from private hands to not need to go the IPO route yet.

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tormeh 7 days ago | parent [-]

The private market is getting out of hand, then. I think it makes sense for private companies beyond a certain size to have the same reporting requirements that listed ones do. At these valuations the private market for startups is becoming systemically important.

	▲	blerb795 7 days ago \| parent [-]
		To some degree, they do -- under SEC rules (Exchange Act §12(g)), private companies with >$10M in assets and 2,000+ shareholders (or 500+ non-accredited investors) have to start public-style reporting. I assume there's some clever accounting to ensure they're not at the 2,000 shareholder cap (perhaps double-trigger RSUs don't count as being a shareholder yet?)