What It’s Like to IPO

What It’s Like to IPO When baby sea turtles are born, they immediately rush by the thousand towards the ocean. Every predator in the area swarms to devour as many as they can. Only a few dozen make it to the water. An even smaller number make it to adulthood, and ultimately return to start the next generation. Startups, like Mother Nature, are a brutal numbers game. This is what it’s like to become one of the few turtles that makes it back to the beach. 12 Years Before You’re standing awkwardly in a one-room office. A guy in a T-shirt hands you a laptop, but tells you to factory reset it first. It belonged to a different engineer yesterday. The startup doesn’t have enough money for excess laptops. It’s 10am and there’s nobody else in the room. He’s talking about how there’s a form to early-exercise your stock options, and you’ve got 30 days to mail a different form to the IRS, and do you have a check, and this is really important if there’s a “liquidity event” one day… you can already…