VCs need to understand what drives IPO activity. They talk about a "lost opportunity" for retail investors, when public market index funds have outperformed 95% of the VC market in recent years. They talk about companies "not wanting" to go public, and simultaneously joke about private market accounting practices. The two are related. They talk about delayed exits as a gift to inflated late-stage VC, when it is the inflation of late-stage VC that has delayed exits. It started with NSMIA, not SoX. Bottom line: Every great company eventually goes public to lower their cost of capital. If a company has not yet gone public, then it is not yet great*. Essentially, as a company saturates their initial market opportunity, growth slows and private capital sources become mismatched. So, the company seeks alternative capital. An IPO is a direct trade of transparency for better terms; rewarding quality with a lower cost of capital. Reporting requirements are why the cost of capital is lower. You can not have one without the other. i.e. If you were to relax reporting requirements, then going public would not be as beneficial. If you were to increase reporting requirements, it would be more beneficial, but to a smaller pool of companies. So while reporting is a burden, it is implicitly worth the trade as long as your performance remains solid. If your business falters after IPO, it's harder to obfuscate. Cost of capital has a direct relationship with interest rates. Yes, macro matters. When interest rates are near zero, the cost of capital is low everywhere. Investors are hungry for new opportunities and develop a greater risk appetite. This means two things: 1) Companies can rely on private capital for longer, and continue generating attractive paper performance. 2) Retail money flows into public markets and creates more a more "optimistic" exit environment. ...