Is the IPO Party Over? | Inc.com: "By all rights, Curt Richardson should at least be thinking about an IPO by now.
Richardson founded Otterbox, a maker of protective cases for iPhones and other handheld devices, in 1998 in Fort Collins, Colorado. Otterbox has more than 600 employees and saw its revenue soar nearly 200% last year, to $350 million.
An IPO could be just a few years down the road--except that Richardson has other ideas. "We aren't going public as long as I'm around," he says.
Richardson says there are plenty of ways to get growth capital without resorting to an IPO. And from what he's seen of his distributors and suppliers, some of whom have gone public, an IPO has little to recommend it. Complying with public-company regulations is expensive and time-consuming. In some cases, he says, newly public companies become obsessed with short-term results at the expense of long-term strategy.
"My feeling is going public changes fundamentally how you run the company," says Richardson. "I know plenty of guys who went public who wish they never had." "
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Richardson founded Otterbox, a maker of protective cases for iPhones and other handheld devices, in 1998 in Fort Collins, Colorado. Otterbox has more than 600 employees and saw its revenue soar nearly 200% last year, to $350 million.
An IPO could be just a few years down the road--except that Richardson has other ideas. "We aren't going public as long as I'm around," he says.
Richardson says there are plenty of ways to get growth capital without resorting to an IPO. And from what he's seen of his distributors and suppliers, some of whom have gone public, an IPO has little to recommend it. Complying with public-company regulations is expensive and time-consuming. In some cases, he says, newly public companies become obsessed with short-term results at the expense of long-term strategy.
"My feeling is going public changes fundamentally how you run the company," says Richardson. "I know plenty of guys who went public who wish they never had." "
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