Need to add a column with the IPO valuation to answer this properly. I'm guessing when you add that column all of these were massive successes except WeWork which went public via SPAC and their IPO imploded.
Valuation is meaningless from the perspective of analyzing if a company has been a success or a failure. Valuation concerns the players who sit at the poker table and how each and everyone of them managed to fare during the game. The table being the company and the players being the investors.
The OP is right in accounting funds raised vs. losses incurred as the metric to watch for.
The funds raised belong mostly to public pension/private funds and insurance companies, with the intermediation of PE/VC funds.
It was a half-joke, designed to illustrate that goals of successful company and successful IPO dump have been conflated the last several years. Ultimately the poker game as you call it is what the people holding the money care about so...
Ha sorry for not getting it. You are mostly right, but I still hold out that very smart and competitive people might want to do all.
Meaning having their fingerprints on a company that achives the trifecta of being a financial success in terms of profit/FCF, marketcap valuation and also makes a trademark product/service used by everybody.
