[lifekaizen]

I’m glad you went direct. As a small retail investor it allows me to have access, and buying from employees and giving them some liquidity feels good like what a market should do.

They also use restricted supply to keep the price high. Everyone’s locked up, no supply, it’s no wonder the price often jumps.

Curious what you would say about pricing startup raises? There’s a line of logic which says don’t price too high, you never want a down round and that keeps the risk low.

[sskates]

Yes, you've hit on the other advantages of a direct listing! Retail investors get the same treatment as big funds instead of being shut out which I love. Everyone's also allowed to sell right away which so you know you have full market information AND it's much better for the employees.

RE startup raises these are all what I call champagne problems (is it possible to win too much?). My philosophy is to aim for a little above (eg 20-30%) "market price" for what similar companies are raising at. If you go too much beyond that (eg 2-3x) then it can start to set the wrong expectations and it can get difficult to beat in the future even if you're doing well. It's not great to have misalignment with your shareholders (eg the investors who are now partial owners of your business). There is another train of thought that says to get the highest valuation you can, investors are professionals and will deal with it. So maybe I'm not bold enough. Either way, funding markets, particularly for startups now, are incredibly rich. They're probably 3x the valuation when we did venture/growth stage funding so you'll be in great shape no matter what.