

Prediction: YC's IPO is in the works. - rokhayakebe

While we all waiting  for the next YC startup to go public or get acquired, we forget about YC itslef as a company. I think there is an IPO somewhere down the line. 
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bootload
_"... I think there is an IPO somewhere down the line. ..."_

Evidence? So why bother going to the market for more capital, less control &
greater risk?

\- more employees? (you can't scale pg, jl with more employees)

\- more money? (yc spreads the risk by using micro-capital & attracting top
candidates)

\- more advertising? (thats how the internet and successful candidates
demonstrating product).

Does not compute. What makes more sense is to bust open the VC market using
less capital, less people creating the best VC coy. that grabs the cream of an
untapped market. Sort of an iteration of the startup pattern applied to a
different, but related industry.

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pg
IPOs accomplish two things: they raise money for the company, and give the
founders a way to sell some of their shares. We don't want to raise money or
sell any of our YC stock, so there would be no point.

But it's misleading even to answer as if it were an option. You need massive
revenues to go public, on the order of $100m/year, which we are nowhere near.
It takes 4 or 5 years on average for startups to generate returns. The only
money we make now is from random early acquisitions. We can't even guess how
much we'd make ongoing.

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blored
True but the companies you fund only get better and better. And it would be
hella nice to cash out. Everyone does fawn over YC and we'd all buy in.

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cperciva
An IPO wouldn't make any sense at all for YC. An IPO, just like venture
capital, allows a company to convert equity into liquid cash; but YC has no
shortage of cash. Instead, YC is limited by the supply of good candidates and
by how much time pg et al. have -- neither of which will be affected at all by
an IPO.

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myoung8
_sarcasm meter explodes_

perhaps more importantly, what do you guys think about the long-term viability
of the YC model? are we going to get to a point (i.e. post-Web 2.0) where
there just aren't any more opportunities for lightweight web companies?

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arasakik
That doesn't make any sense to me - why do you think that? It seems like
taking in a lot of cash from wall street would put pressure on them to become
more like a traditional VC.

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s_baar
The thing I hate the most about people's conception about businesses is the
goal of IPO. I really don't understand it.

