Frank Quattrone Discusses Going Public VS Being Public

According to a recent

from TechCrunch, Frank Quattrone discussed the difference between the investment climate today and when he began his career in the pre-IPO boom 1980s at the Web 2.0 Summit. When asked whats the same in the environment, Quattrone says, "The creativity and risk taking and the passion that people have as entreprenuers and also the infrastructure to support people who take risks.” Quattrone says the difference is, "In the late 80s there were 285 public tech companies valued at a 237 billion dollar market cap, whereas today there are 6,000 public tech companies worth trillions of dollars. Tech is a much more fundamental part of economy. While the IPO market incentivizes entreprenuers to take risks. It's a lot easier to go public than to be public, because right now there are 6000 companies you need to compete against." Quattrone gave a quick IPO tutorial as well. His three main points to consider include: -How important is it for us to be a public company? -Do you have the 5-10 year snapshot or better video of your strategy? -Are you sure you're not a trick pony? The report says, while IPOs can be great especially if you've got employees itching to exercise liquidity options, companies need to give it some thought before they hitch themselves to the quarterly wagon. Quattrone adds, “Sometimes it's great to have a report card about what you're worth every day and sometimes it's not so great.”