I don’t get it though, why not just go public now and get tons of money? The IPO may never fetch as high of a price as it would now, even if the company gets more valuable in the future.
The cool part is, they don't need to. The founders are in control, not the VCs or other investors, so the company isn't obliged to put generating money over all other concerns. And being billionaires, the founders are probably doing fine. They'd apparently prefer to keep the good thing they've got going than to ruin it by selling it off.
There's more in life than getting even more money.
Long term that should net them a lot more money. Having and keeping a true mission will allow them to leave all competitors behind. Because even if competitors can seem strong from time to time (VS Code and Atom recently) they will end up dying because of de-prioritization and leadership without vision (Atom).
I think they aren't technically billionaires. Rather, JetBrains is valued at over a billion dollars. So if they sold their entire stake, then they'd be billionaires.
I'm sure they pay themselves well but I don't think they will be sitting on a billion dollars in either cash or shares.
Well, there's values that differ by countries. I've seen a few old family run businesses being sold off to US VCs and things didnt turn out well often:
- customers got screwed over
- same with employees
- quality "optimizations"
- financial engineering
- founder's longterm values abondoned for quarterly gains
Not taking VC cash is a more traditional take on things elsewhere.
Not taking VC cash is a more traditional take on things here in the US, too. The VC cash/investment money chase is really only a thing in tech circles, and a few other niche areas. The vast majority of businesses simply build "organically" (and most die doing it).
Sometimes it's not all about money. Having shareholders can make the company head in a direction different to the direction that the current founders want it to go.
"Obtain as much money as possible" isn't the goal of everyone at every time, especially when one already has all the money and resources they need.
Not everyone believes life is a game where the goal is to die with the highest score, above all else. Some do, but not everyone.
You're able to control pretty much every aspect within a private company with no shareholders to answer to and no public disclosures. You're free to use the assets of your company to implement your personal values.
Why would anybody need tons of money? They have a working company, happy customers and perhaps happy enough employees too. And I'm sure they have salary big enough to pay the rent... and drive a Porsche if they want to.
But only in the sense of having a company that "is worth about $7 billion" according to some estimates. The point of the discussion is that they could convert that to real money that could be used to buy other assets (but no-one is forcing them to do so, so they really have the choice).
I don’t see why they need to. They are incredibly successful already plus pretty sure enjoying what they do. An IPO would probably put much of that at risk so why bother? I’ve always understood them to be driven more by the desire to help make software development more pleasant.
If they lose control and starts putting profit up front as their primary objective than developer spirits, I'm sure many will move to vs code and vs code may speed up its development with more eyes and hands.
Why does it have to be in the USA? You can IPO at other stock exchanges. For example, CD Projekt Red, the game studio that developed the Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077, is listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (Poland) and valued at ~$10bln (although the stock price has been really volatile recently).
