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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

There are a lot of disadvantages to going public and very few advantages. Most companies these days don't need the money because private money is willing to pour billions in, and it's pretty cheap to run a company now if you're just software.

That's pretty much the only advantage, other than liquidity for early employees, which most companies don't really seem to care about, since many of the early employees have left by the IPO, and the ones that are sticking around for their payout are probably just coasting anyway.

But the disadvantages are numerous. You have to tell your competitors about your profit and loss. You have to hire a bunch of auditors to make sure you follow all the SEC regulations. You can't do any long term bets because the market will skewer you and make it hard to hire. Your every action is up for public scrutiny. Your valuation is no longer flexible when you want to make acquisitions with stock.

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> private money is willing to pour billions in

That private money needs to return to its LPs, it's not an unlimited term investment.

> You have to hire a bunch of auditors to make sure you follow all the SEC regulations

Following the law is just so onerous and painful.

Sunlight is a wonderful antiseptic.

It IS painful. Today's laws reflect the misdeeds of the last 100 years. Compliance is incredibly expensive and slows down everything. I don't think its a bad thing at all, but most people don't understand the scope of the legal burden of being a public company. As a private citizen, I have a legal obligation to not murder people. As a public company, analogously, one would have to file a report every few months detailing how many people you didn't murder. Please indulge my terrible analogy.

I'm with Mr. Benioff on the point that private companies can harbor a lot of decay, while over-concentrating wealth. However, data shows that small-firm IPOs are simply not very profitable, and acquisition can be much more attractive: https://www.sec.gov/info/smallbus/acsec/acsec-090712-ritter-...

I work at a publicly traded company and deal with compliance and audit teams on a regular basis. It's not the end of the world. It's not overly costly. It's a good check and balance to ensure things are on the up and up.

As companies get larger, the risk for fraud and misdeeds increases. Kickbacks, payoffs, etc. Compliance and auditors are a good thing. Trust but verify.

That’s not at all what that means. Lots of companies follow the law. But when they go public they have to hire expensive auditors to prove it every quarter and it’s a drag on the business. A drag on both profits and productivity because you need to use up a whole bunch of staff time to interface with the auditors.

> it’s a drag on the business. A drag on both profits and productivity <

They have to hire accountants and lawyers, too. What a drag! Things would be better off with only engineers and designers! Oh that drasted HR to make sure we don't discriminate. Drags.

I interface with auditor and compliance teams. I'm an engineering manager. It doesn't consume 100% of my time, nor is it a waste.

You're speaking in hyperboles and extremes. What you're saying just isn't true.

I've worked with compliance teams too. It used up 50% of the time of three engineers, plus three people whose full time job was interfacing with compliance. And this was just in the InfoSec group. So that's four and half FTEs averaging at the time about $100K a year (probably now $200K). So today that would be a million dollars expended dealing with compliance.

And do you know what value compliance brought to us? Nothing. We were already doing all the necessary things. All we were spending our time on was proving that we were already doing all the required things.

what the commentor said, may not be true, but you didn't actually make an argument or at least back it up with anything.

as far as I can tell, your comment boils down to 'hiring internal compliance employees/consultants is not a waste.'

but you didn't say anything to back up that the money going to compliance is not a drag. What value does it add to the business? It seems it just prevents catastrophe (legal problems) and has its own costs (termed 'drag') but doesn't add business value as it does not contribute to the USP of product/service to the customer.

Even in your own case, if compliance takes any % of time there is an opportunity cost: you can't work on something that adds to the product/service because that time is spent on compliance.

Does your comment aim to disagree with that?

If you could just not do something to not need lawyers and accountants, then yes, the same logic would apply. You can obviate the need for the compliances required of a public company by not becoming a public company.

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