Bill Gurley Quotes

I met with several public company CEOs to learn about their experiences of going public and listened to as many earnings calls as I possibly could.

The good parts about being a public company are increased discipline, increased execution and increased transparency to make sure that you are really building a company for a hundred years.

There's not a whole lot of advantage for a company to be public.

If you're going to run a public company, be absolutely certain of what the parameters are, what the clarity is, that you can explain it to yourselves and explain it externally.

I hated being a public company CEO.

I don't want to take a company public and not have it do extremely well and fail the public shareholder.

Clearly as you move to being a public company, probably even more than growth, there is a huge value based on predictability.

I don't think I'd enjoy running a public company. We haven't needed to go to the market to fund expansion.

I wish we could be private with Tesla. It actually makes us less efficient to be a public company.

Going public is one step in the life cycle of a company; it's not the last step.

I'm saying that when a publicly traded company says something doesn't make a difference in terms of their investments, I trust that they are representing those facts accurately.

The IPO is no exit for the entrepreneur; it's the start of purgatory.

I'm on the Business Roundtable, the CEOs of the largest 100-odd companies in the country. Most of these people wanted very much to be the CEO of a large public company but realize that it's not exactly what they had anticipated, for lots of reasons. One is competition has gotten a lot worse, and more global.

It is much more convenient not to be a public company. As a private company you don't have to give information to the public. Secrecy is an important factor of success in the commodity business.

You have to have in mind what you want when you go public. It's not just an end in and of itself. Suddenly, you have investors to satisfy. Investors who want - who demand - a return.

Being a public company is really terrible for most companies. I'd say Facebook and Google have done a pretty good job of standing up to the incredible quarterly pressure to hit numbers, but most companies - and I've observed a lot now - don't do a very good job of that.

It's a special thing to be a public company.

Being a public company certainly doesn't stop you from taking a really long-term time horizon, but it does make it more difficult.

The reason for looking at a public listing instead of private capital is that I have always enjoyed running a public limited company.

When Facebook went public, they didn't have a particularly strong model of governance.

Whether you stay private or go public, after all is said and done, a CEO's job is to create lasting shareholder value.

The great problem with corporate capitalism is that publicly owned companies have short time horizons. Unlike a privately owned business, the top executives of a publicly owned corporation generally come to their positions late in life. Consequently, they have a few years in which to make their fortune.

I think we have to take a look at corporate law. We have to take a look at the incentives that we can perhaps use to encourage more longer term.

Banks are run by executives, and executives protect themselves, and that does not always mean that banks are going to behave rationally.

Life at a public company ain't for me. The board pays you what you're worth, then you get reamed for your compensation.