Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon asks startups to reconsider going public

Goldman Sachs is one of the largest investment banker “bookrunners” for initial public offerings — where banks are paid several million dollars for each listing they underwrite. However, CEO David Solomon told attendees at the Cisco AI Summit in Palo Alto that startups should reconsider the idea of ​​going public, according to The Guardian. Financial Times.

Startups can scale to the same size and make a lot of money in private markets, without having to deal with the hassles of being a publicly traded company, Solomon said.

“It’s no fun being a public company,” he said. “Who wants to become a public company?”

Goldman is working more and more with large private companies, including helping Stripe with its $6.5 billion round in 2023. Stripe is part of the growing class of large private technology companies that have decided to stay private for much longer.