<story><title>IPOs are expensive and cumbersome – Try a direct listing, like we did at Spotify</title><url>https://www.ft.com/content/60cd1bb8-9970-11e8-88de-49c908b1f264</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>erispoe</author><text>&amp;gt; e. Friends and family and supporters can participate - especially from their retirement accounts. This is really important - the wealth creation being broad has a real good-news feel. Sharing the wealth.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a really bad idea to do stock picking, or any other risky investment strategy, with your retirement account, and a really bad idea to promote it. One company goes bust and suddenly you lost your retirement savings. Or your parents did and you&amp;#x27;ll have to explain them why they&amp;#x27;ll have to continue working in their 70s and 80s.</text></item><item><author>rayhano</author><text>I posted this article because we’re planning to do the same and wanted to gather thoughts from the tech community (the financial community has commented on this sufficiently to help inform our process).&lt;p&gt;I thought it might help to share our motivations for eventually listing our company vs taking more VC:&lt;p&gt;a. The public markets force transparency. This aligns with our values.&lt;p&gt;b. Governance enforced by VCs (especially in the UK) is largely founder-unfriendly. There are no prefs, investor majority consents or other unfair terms in company governance when you’re public.&lt;p&gt;c. Secondaries - shares sold by employees or early investors - can be sold at any time, at fair market value.&lt;p&gt;d. Capital raising - debt or equity - as a public company comes with fewer strings.&lt;p&gt;e. Friends and family and supporters can participate - especially from their retirement accounts. This is really important - the wealth creation being broad has a real good-news feel. Sharing the wealth.&lt;p&gt;f. Trust is built with the public - I feel - more when you’re publicly listed and ‘established’.&lt;p&gt;The ‘downsides’ of quarterly market updates I’m sure are more intense than it feels from the outside, but I’d like to think our growth story happening in a public sphere will help build trust so when we do need more capital a broader base of investors feel confident engaging with us.&lt;p&gt;Thoughts welcomed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eldavido</author><text>Yes and no. I read in Brealey-Myers [1] that you can get 80-90% of the way to pure beta (market risk) by picking 15-20 stocks.  You just have to pick ones that aren&amp;#x27;t super correlated, e.g. 10 pharmaceutical companies.&lt;p&gt;Whether it&amp;#x27;s worth your time messing about with this is a separate matter entirely.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;Principles-Corporate-Finance-Richard-Brealey&amp;#x2F;dp&amp;#x2F;0073405108&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.amazon.com&amp;#x2F;Principles-Corporate-Finance-Richard-...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>IPOs are expensive and cumbersome – Try a direct listing, like we did at Spotify</title><url>https://www.ft.com/content/60cd1bb8-9970-11e8-88de-49c908b1f264</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>erispoe</author><text>&amp;gt; e. Friends and family and supporters can participate - especially from their retirement accounts. This is really important - the wealth creation being broad has a real good-news feel. Sharing the wealth.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a really bad idea to do stock picking, or any other risky investment strategy, with your retirement account, and a really bad idea to promote it. One company goes bust and suddenly you lost your retirement savings. Or your parents did and you&amp;#x27;ll have to explain them why they&amp;#x27;ll have to continue working in their 70s and 80s.</text></item><item><author>rayhano</author><text>I posted this article because we’re planning to do the same and wanted to gather thoughts from the tech community (the financial community has commented on this sufficiently to help inform our process).&lt;p&gt;I thought it might help to share our motivations for eventually listing our company vs taking more VC:&lt;p&gt;a. The public markets force transparency. This aligns with our values.&lt;p&gt;b. Governance enforced by VCs (especially in the UK) is largely founder-unfriendly. There are no prefs, investor majority consents or other unfair terms in company governance when you’re public.&lt;p&gt;c. Secondaries - shares sold by employees or early investors - can be sold at any time, at fair market value.&lt;p&gt;d. Capital raising - debt or equity - as a public company comes with fewer strings.&lt;p&gt;e. Friends and family and supporters can participate - especially from their retirement accounts. This is really important - the wealth creation being broad has a real good-news feel. Sharing the wealth.&lt;p&gt;f. Trust is built with the public - I feel - more when you’re publicly listed and ‘established’.&lt;p&gt;The ‘downsides’ of quarterly market updates I’m sure are more intense than it feels from the outside, but I’d like to think our growth story happening in a public sphere will help build trust so when we do need more capital a broader base of investors feel confident engaging with us.&lt;p&gt;Thoughts welcomed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>patrickg_zill</author><text>I think that it depends on how close to retirement you are. Having a bad time with a stock at 35 is a different thing than if you are 64.</text></comment>