US startups don’t want to go public anymore. That’s bad news for Americans – Quartz

Source: US startups don’t want to go public anymore. That’s bad news for Americans – Quartz, by Gwynn Guilford

The upside of public listing is that it lets companies raise huge sums of capital, issue more shares, issue debt with relative ease, and use equity to fund acquisitions. But because of the ways the American economy has evolved, those advantages are less important than they once were.

The problem is, two features of public listings—disclosure and accounting standards—make things tough on companies with more intangible assets.