I think this is part of a trend that is occurring everywhere, not just the Valley: the gradual phasing-out of the public corporation [0][1]<p>Companies in every sector, not just technology, are switching to private financing. And why wouldn't they? There's less regulation, and less having to answer to Wall Street and the occasional corporate raider. Since there's more wealth accumulating at the top it's easier than ever to find wealthy individuals to finance you without having to tap the markets.<p>I don't think this is a positive development for society, but under the current circumstances it's probably an unavoidable one.<p>[0]: <a href="http://appcgg.co.uk/siteContent/downloads/Causes%20and%20Consequences%20of%20the%20Decline%20of%20the%20Public%20Corporation.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://appcgg.co.uk/siteContent/downloads/Causes%20and%20Con...</a>
[1]: <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-06-24/where-have-all-the-publicly-traded-companies-gone-" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-06-24/where-hav...</a>
Most of the blame for this can be placed on Sarbox (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes%E2%80%93Oxley_Act" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes%E2%80%93Oxley_Act</a>), and other regulations imposed by the SEC.<p>Believe me, if you're a founder, you want to exit as well. The problem is, the cost for being a public company has gone up dramatically, due to increased regulatory compliance costs.
VCs aren't playing with their own money. They're playing with funds from many investors. The exits (and writedowns, etc) are controlled upstream of the VC. Right now VC funds are a hedge and the investors don't need a payoff. At some point those investors need action and will require their VC folks to remove them from those investments (see dotcom bust). This isn't unusual and has nothing to do with what Zach mentions in his article.
> number of people from GitHub who are in a financial position to become true angels.<p>How much money does one need to make to become a "true angel"?
I work at a venture-backed company, started by people who already have enough money of their own. VCs don't make up enough share of the board to force them to do anything. Given that the founders already have money, what is their incentive to exit?<p>And if I don't like it as an employee, sure, I could take a job somewhere else. Somewhere else that also likely has its own reasons for taking as long as possible to go public.<p>What if the way it used to be was the anomaly, and now is normal?