Your implication is that if they don't need more money, they can just ignore all those investor-owned shares? That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Reddit's an odd duck given their ownership history and their investors. But I don't think they're that odd. Nobody gives you that kind of money without expecting to be well paid and soon.
> implication is that if they don't need more money, they can just ignore all those investor-owned shares
No, they can ignore the venture capitalists' shares. Reddit's Series F was led by a mutual fund. Most of Reddit's shares are non-voting common stock, under a voting-rights agreement or held by non-VC investors.
The difference is meaningful when tracing incentives. Venture capital, almost by definition, involves a high-loss high-reward portfolio. Most bets are expected to bust. That makes a middling bet that doesn't return the fund essentially worthless, which in turn encourages shooting for the moon. Late-stage private portfolios cannot sustain heavy losses. They are looking at preservation of capital in addition to returns, which makes them fundamentally different from VCs.
Shorthanding all investors in tech companies to VCs denies you visibility into a rich spectrum of actors, incentives and alignments.
