Jason M. Lemkin breaks down what it actually costs to run a public company: constant investor scrutiny, a lifestyle you can't escape, and years of dilution before you see IPO upside. He compares taking a $1B acquisition now versus the grind of going public, and argues founders should decide early if they want that life.
No one's literally said that, but that was. And I was like. And here was my question, the founders. And you could tell me yours. I'm like, here's the question. You've obviously built something great. Okay? You're growing triple digits at 25 million. Obviously in a year, in theory, you'll be bigger and better. Do you want to be a public company CEO? And did he. That's what that, that got them to take the meeting. They didn't want to do the meeting. I might be honest, like, you don't have to decide this and you can tell me when you decided. It's interesting. But I'm like, you don't have to know at 25 million if you want to be a public company CEO, but maybe at 50 or 60, you gotta know. You gotta know. And I think it's. I wish I'd done that, but I don't think it's for everybody. Some people really want to just live. This is why a lot of folks want to delay going public. They don't want the scrutiny. They don't want to live that life, right? They don't want to spend a third of their life meeting with public company investors and then another third of their life doing the public and only a third of their company doing the company stuff. And then they're supposed to grow 38% and they grow 37% and they get crushed. And they just don't want to live. Most folks. So that was, if you want to do it right, do it right. But that's just the one thing to think about that was if you have an off ramp and the offers hard to match, right? $1 billion today with dilution, let's say it takes you another seven years IPO and you suffer and you're capital efficient, but you have two more rounds and then 6% dilution a year. That billion today is like two and a half billion seven years down the road probably, isn't it?
