Stripe sets one-year timetable to decide on going public

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Importantly they said within a year they will go public OR do a private market transaction to make employees liquid

It’s honestly perplexing that so many tech companies have stayed private for such a long period of time. Especially in an era of rising interest rates and rising mortgage costs, people really want to be able to sell their stock. The difference between packages with equity you can sell and equity you can’t sell is gargantuan and there are massive benefits to having a public price that lets people fairly value that equity. Hoping to get fair value in a private market transaction is far from ideal and many employees will feel they are being forced to pay an unfair premium for liquidity.

TIL Stripe have lowered their internal valuation from $95bn to $63bn since mid 2022.

It&#x27;s interesting that there is so much technology and third party business involved in the process of moving value.<p>- Visa has a market cap of $463B<p>- Mastercard $362B<p>- PayPal $90B<p>- Block $48B<p>Could it theoretically all be automated?

I assume this is in part due to the 10 year expiration of ISOs? Stripe was founded in 2010.

Interesting timing, wouldn&#x27;t think it&#x27;s optimal given macro conditions, but perhaps they don&#x27;t want to wait however long it&#x27;ll take to get back to the frothy markets

Is there any way to buy stock from employees now?

Maybe they should have IPO&#x27;d or directly listed in 2019 at the very peak when everyone else was rushing to the exit as I said before [0]. Of course this is also not in hindsight either. [1]<p>Seems like they now don&#x27;t want to wait anymore and just unload their shares into the market and especially onto retail investors.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=32567217" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=32567217</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20993919" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20993919</a>

Going public isn&#x27;t a badge of honor: it&#x27;s a last-ditch method to find external financing where private investors wouldn&#x27;t bite.

Oof, there were a lot of secondaries done at some pretty ridiculous valuations, multiples of the valuation before it was just cut

Any likely consequences for Stripe’s customers if they become public?

Stripe reminds me Cisco systems in 1999. Cisco powered the Internet economy. Savvy CEO and team and amazing execution. Stock traded at $60 in 2001. Went down to $16 in just 2 years and still at $40 after 25 years.<p>Stripe is equally relevant.<p>It may not achieve the same private market valuation of $95B for some time. But we love the company, and will continue to use it as a partner, customer, and cheer leader.