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Stripe sets one-year timetable to decide on going public

wsj.com

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Re: Stripe sets one-year timetable to decide on going public

#4

Interesting timing, wouldn't think it's optimal given macro conditions, but perhaps they don't want to wait however long it'll take to get back to the frothy markets

It's because the earliest RSUs they issued are expiring this year: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/stripes-early-stock-...

Re: Stripe sets one-year timetable to decide on going public

#5
post #4

Interesting timing, wouldn't think it's optimal given macro conditions, but perhaps they don't want to wait however long it'll take to get back to the frothy markets

It's because the earliest RSUs they issued are expiring this year: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/stripes-early-stock-...

They’re options that are set to expire, not RSUs. Yes, the employees could exercise them to prevent them from expiring, but then Uncle Sam comes to collect his dues. And that’s where illiquidity burns you.

Re: Stripe sets one-year timetable to decide on going public

#6
post #2

Importantly they said within a year they will go public OR do a private market transaction to make employees liquid

That’s a LONG time (in total) for employees to wait for liquidity. Yes, they likely provided some opportunities for early employees to liquidate some of their holdings, but it’s got to suck to sit on that much funny money for so long.

Re: Stripe sets one-year timetable to decide on going public

#8
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because the earliest RSUs they issued are expiring this year: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/stripes-early-stock-...

They’re options that are set to expire, not RSUs. Yes, the employees could exercise them to prevent them from expiring, but then Uncle Sam comes to collect his dues. And that’s where illiquidity burns you.

[deleted]

Re: Stripe sets one-year timetable to decide on going public

#9
post #7

It's interesting that there is so much technology and third party business involved in the process of moving value. - Visa has a market cap of $463B - Mastercard $362B - PayPal $90B - Block $48B Could it theoretically all be automated?

No. (Channels patio11) As a society we have decided to delegate a bunch of responsibilities to the companies that move money. The most notable one is fraud protection. The companies that make this much money do so by pretending that a transfer of money is a clean, simple, and absolute thing. In reality it is messy, reversible, and fraud-prone. Being able to transfer $1B dollars as easily as you are able to transfer $1 would be a failure of the system, not a feature.

Re: Stripe sets one-year timetable to decide on going public

#10
Maybe they should have IPO'd or directly listed in 2019 at the very peak when everyone else was rushing to the exit as I said before [0]. Of course this is also not in hindsight either. [1]

Seems like they now don't want to wait anymore and just unload their shares into the market and especially onto retail investors.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32567217

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20993919

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