Yeah I think the question is "great for who". I think it could be great for the founders (who can achieve liquidity in a variety of ways at any point really, that regular employees don't have access to. I'm not critical of this -- makes sense to me -- just pointing that out.)
It wasn't so good for employees who would've wanted to sell and diversify when the valuation was, conservatively, about 2x what it is now. And maybe even 2.5x plus if you extrapolate what Stripe could've been worth at the height of the market.
For the long term company, it still could be a good, because if they can raise capital privately like they were just able to do, then they get the upside of access to money without the downside of share price fluctuations, scrutiny, more bureaucracy etcetera.
1) Sacrifice the entire companies long term existence to let a small number of people sell at 2.5X the share price one time during a macroeconomic peak
2) Allow almost everyone, including new employees, a longer-term path to wealth, by ignoring that bubble peak and focusing on long term value generation outside of the public markets (which notoriously destroy companies)
IMO, it’s such a base layer of internet businesses, they should keep it private forever; otherwise it’ll be PayPal in 10 years.
>It wasn't so good for employees who would've wanted to sell and diversify when the valuation was, conservatively, about 2x what it is now.
Again I will point out that the "good" argument is one-sided.
Had the employees sold at 2x the valuation, then some person (or pension) bought at 2x the valuation and lost a lot of money. What is that "good"? Because the SV crew "got theirs"?
It wasn't so good for employees who would've wanted to sell and diversify when the valuation was, conservatively, about 2x what it is now. And maybe even 2.5x plus if you extrapolate what Stripe could've been worth at the height of the market.
For the long term company, it still could be a good, because if they can raise capital privately like they were just able to do, then they get the upside of access to money without the downside of share price fluctuations, scrutiny, more bureaucracy etcetera.