Companies like Stripe are avoiding IPOs because the private markets now solve the two main historical drivers: access to capital and employee liquidity. With annual secondary tenders and vast private funding available, the traditional benefits of going public are no longer compelling for many late-stage startups.

A decade ago, 88% of a tech company's value was created post-IPO. For recent IPOs, 55% of the market cap creation happened while the company was still private, fundamentally changing where investors capture growth.

Unlike a decade ago, today's most transformative, high-growth companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are choosing to remain private for longer. This trend concentrates the highest potential returns in private markets, making it difficult for public investors to 'own the future' of technology.

The venue for tech value creation has dramatically shifted from public to private markets. For recent IPOs, over half of their market cap was generated while private, a stark reversal from ten years prior when 88% of value was created post-IPO.

The traditional IPO exit is being replaced by a perpetual secondary market for elite private companies. This new paradigm provides liquidity for investors and employees without the high costs and regulatory burdens of going public. This shift fundamentally alters the venture capital lifecycle, enabling longer private holding periods.

Top-tier private companies like Stripe and Databricks are actively choosing to delay IPOs, viewing the public market as an inferior "product." With access to cheaper private capital and freedom from quarterly scrutiny and activist investors, staying private offers a better environment to build long-term value.

Top companies like Stripe or SpaceX can stay private forever by using robust secondary markets to provide liquidity to employees and investors. This allows them to focus on long-term growth without the burdens of public company reporting and quarterly profit pressures.

The abundance of private capital means the most successful companies no longer need to go public for growth funding. This disrupts the traditional VC model, where IPOs are a primary exit path, forcing firms to re-evaluate how and when they achieve liquidity for their limited partners, even for their best assets.

Many long-standing tech companies are going public not because they are strong businesses, but because their venture capital investors need a liquidity event after 15-20 years. Public market investors should be wary of these IPOs, as the underlying companies are often 'dead in the water' with historically poor post-IPO stock performance.