"... given my experiences with Tesla and SolarCity, I am hesitant to foist being public on SpaceX, especially given the long term nature of our mission ... Public company stocks, particularly if big step changes in technology are involved, go through extreme volatility ... This causes people to be distracted by the manic-depressive nature of the stock instead of creating great products."
Publicly traded comapanies become more about short-term shareholder returns than anything else.