Can any startup go public?

Question

With the rise of GoFundMe and blockchain based ICOs it got me thinking, could you skip all VC steps and attempt to grow a small startup as a public company by expecting to generate capital by selling shares overtime?Like a GoFundMe where you announce your intentions to build a product, the early backers would be those who bought your stock helping the price to rise.The company would need to stock split and regularly sell more shares during it's years of growth.

mindcrime · Accepted Answer

You don't necessarily need to have gone through VC's to go public. That's more or less orthogonal to the issue of going public. But regardless of whether you take VC money or not, there are lots of rules around trading stock and going public.
That said, there is a mechanism that is more, well, "direct" than the traditional IPO process you usually read about. That mechanism is known, appropriately enough, as a "direct listing" or "direct public offering." See:
https://www.investopedia.com/investing/difference-between-ip...
https://www.nyse.com/direct-listing
etc.
Note that there are still plenty of rules and regulations involved, but it is a lighter weight process than the traditional IPO. But as the linked articles note, there are downsides to DL/DPO for the company who is selling, with one of the biggest being the fact that there's is no guarantee that any shares will sell.

duped · Answer

There's so much regulatory burden that it's not worth it. The point of VC is to get funding other than debt without taking on the burden of offering a public security. That comes with a bunch of caveats, like raising at a discount, only offering to accredited investors, etc.What you're talking about would probably be illegal in the United States unless you restricted it in certain ways.

WheelsAtLarge · Answer

That's one of the big selling points of crypto. In the same way that the web made it possible for everyone and their brother to publish information to the world, crypto will make it easy for everyone to finance a company by a group of investors anywhere in the world. The technology will be there. There are going to be many more companies in the world. I'm sure many will be great and many more, by a long shot, will be crap.