Jay Hoag

So in addition to Microsoft and Apple, I mentioned NVIDIA is at 2.8 trillion.

Amazon and Google at 2 trillion, pretty staggering.

And then Facebook slash Meta at 1.5 trillion.

So that's dramatically different market values than 30 years ago.

Today's market puzzles me for at least one reason.

I understand it's standard to say, oh, companies want to stay private longer, et cetera.

I think that's true in some cases, although that was pre-Google going public.

That was also the concern.

They were staying private too long.

And I understand if companies have specific things they want to invest in under the cloak of being private, probably going public.

But I'm old school in that I believe the vast majority of the best companies will benefit by being public over the long run.

There's discipline of being public.

These days, you can manage the guidance expectations however you want, including not providing guidance.

It provides a public currency.

It provides a fully liquid stock for all your employees on a persistent basis over time.

I'm totally puzzled as to why the technology IPO market is just so moribund.

We're now in our fourth year of pathetic numbers overall.

So maybe I'm missing something.

But even in mediocre years, historically, there were 50 or 60 US-based tech IPOs.

So I hearken for those years.