Aileen Lee Quotes

With a private company, you've got to get into who's investing and what's the balance sheet like. So going public is a positive thing from the perspective of the sales organization.

I think there are a lot of companies that are staying private longer. Much more of their growth is happening while they are on the private side. So their valuations are hitting $1 billion while they are still private more often.

Venture capital is about capturing the value between the startup phase and the public company phase.

There are positives and negatives to publicly traded and private companies.

We're all shareholders. These guys below me, they see the CEO taking it easy, it's their money.

Taking the company private was not the easiest thing I've done in my life.

Regarding our links with the Russian government, Severstal is a private company with no government participation. We are answerable to our shareholders.

I hope we’re on the road to more truth-telling to investors.

It is no limitation upon property rights or freedom of contract to require that when men receive from Government the privilege of doing business under corporate form, which frees them from individual responsibility, and enables them to call into their enterprises the capital of the public, they shall do so upon absolutely truthful representations as to the value of the property in which the capital is to be invested.

With tech startups, it's all loose-goosie. You raise money as you go, often from friends, family and investors.

Early investors in Uber and Airbnb, though they remain private companies, have valued them at stratospheric multiples based largely on the notion that Uber will transform and dominate local transportation and Airbnb will revolutionize the hotel industry.

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

My obligation is to disclose companies in which I'm an officer, a director, or an investor.

Ultimately, the success of America's market economy depends on trust. This includes trust between buyers and sellers, between lenders and borrowers, and between investors and the companies in which they invest.

Investors are right to demand a clear path to self-sustainability from every business they invest in, and I believe we should ask for the same from philanthropy.

For all founders, going public is a momentous milestone that has to be experienced to be fully understood. It is the culmination of years of hard work and personal sacrifice.

For better or worse, a lot of people who build things don't want to part ways. They don't have the short exit plan that a lot of the investors have.

I was, as president and chairman of the board, required by law to verify the veracity of the financial figures, the assets under management, the number of outstanding shares, et cetera.

The vast majority of companies don't go public and mint dozens of millionaires. And most companies don't go around doling out stock options; private companies tend to be very tight about ownership.

I've had two IPOs: with Etsy in 2015 and Cloudera in 2016. There have also been a ton of trade sales in my portfolio.

We capitalists? We want transparency.

When you look at how technology companies are funded, it's not a zero-sum game. It could be 20 investors in one company, and everybody has to work together for the benefit of that company.

As a serial entrepreneur, angel investor and public company CEO, nothing irks me more than when a startup founder talks about wanting to cash in with an initial public offering.

Venture capital is debt. People don't understand that.

We have to have a business model that can be a sustainable and acceptable one to both regulators and the other stakeholders, clients, and investors.