The business arm of Raspberry Pi is preparing to make an initial public offering (IPO) in London. CEO Eben Upton tells Ars that should the IPO happen, it will let Raspberry Pi’s not-for-profit side expand by “at least a factor of 2X.” And while it’s “an understandable thing” that Raspberry Pi enthusiasts could be concerned, “while I’m involved in running the thing, I don’t expect people to see any change in how we do things.”
All I know is that basically every IPO I’ve seen has eventually made the product worse. I have no data to back this up, just feelings, but still. As soon as a company starts worrying about shareholders, corners start getting cut or prices start going up for no reason.
Those are the best two examples that come to my mind. Both were great until they IPO’d.
The problem, as I see it, with IPO’s is that the company becomes beholden to shareholders who care nothing for the product, and only for the profit. Quality and profit are fairly mutually exclusive these days.
Reddit hasn’t gone public just yet
Sometimes you have to pre-suck to show investors you are serious about dismantling your company so they can feed on the corpse.
build something, IPO and cash out, then wall st. vultures suck all the value out of it
Google IPO’d back in 2004. Do you really consider that to be the pivotal point in Google’s history?
Reddit hasn’t even IPO’d yet.
Going IPO does not immediately turn a company evil. That’s something that happens over time, because of being beholden to so many shareholders who only care about profit.
Reddit has been making many user-detrimental changes in preparation for their IPO.
When they are private they still have shareholders, the shares are just not available to the public. When it goes public is when some of those private shareholders want to cash out. So they drive the fundamentals however and sell the stock over the next years.
Yep. Inevitably, when this happens, stock price manipulation becomes the core business.