“ If you went back to say 1995 and asked any entrepreneur or tech executive, “what is your one key goal for your company?,” they would all say – “IPO”. This overwhelming desire to be a part of a company that achieved a public offering was universal. It mirrored an athlete going to the Olympics, or perhaps playing in the pros. This passionate desire to be public is completely gone in Silicon Valley. For reasons you could easily list – Sarbanes Oxley; 12b1 trading rules; shareholder litigation; option pricing scandals; personal liability on 10-Q filing signatures – it is simply not much fun being a public executive. The Benchmark portfolio current has over 15 companies north of $50MM in revenues, and they are all private. This would have never happened in 1995 (even pre-bubble) where most of these companies would ALREADY BE public. I don’t think we have a demand problem, we have a supply problem. No one wants to manage a public company. ”
Bleak VC Quarter? Why? « abovethecrowd.com (via fred-wilson)
