Technically, things are only worth what people will pay for them. Accordingly, you could also argue that the value of the company cannot be known unless and until it is wholly acquired. But these kinds of arguments are somewhat pedantic. They have built a tremendous amount of value. Whether it's $1 billion or $3.5 billion, it's more value than virtually everyone upvoting your comment has built.
Exactly! I would actually argue that if anyone wanted to buy the whole company tomorrow, they would probably have to pay at least 4-5x premium to today's valuation (purely illustrative/gut figure, I have no inside knowledge here aside from what's publicly known).
Stripe is simply one of the SV's greatest hits and has a ton of upside and real option value. Any investor who got in today understands that and would have no good reason to sell for anything less than a really nice premium to where they got in.
Simply put, in the current market their IPO would literally fly off the shelf, they would get great institutional public investors and have a ton of good growth financing options available to them down the road (follow-ons, converts, heck even straight debt soon). Every investor in the deal understands that very well. Having said that, the investor roster doesn't look like a pre-IPO round (I suspect they would have likes of Templeton otherwise), so they will probably grow the company quite a bit more before they hit the public markets (needless to say - a smart move).
At any rate, I completely agree that pointing out that the preferred is more valuable than common is red herring. Theoretically yes - but in this case and in the case of every great late-stage private company, I would argue that the price of the common >= price of the latest preferred round.
