After a long pause, tech IPOs are finally showing signs of life again, with recent listings from CoreWeave, MNTN, and Chime. It feels like the perfect moment to revisit a critical question: Should founders and VCs really care if their companies ever go public?

There’s a common argument out there that venture capital should chase returns wherever they come from—private secondaries, acquisitions, buyouts, or IPOs. Founders often share this perspective; after all, either route typically leads to life-changing wealth. Plus, running a public company isn’t exactly a walk in the park. Reporting, earnings calls, quarterly pressures—who wouldn’t want to skip that headache? Maybe that’s why we’ve seen fewer companies going public over the past couple of decades.

But here’s my take: if you’re an ambitious founder or venture investor, going public should still be your ultimate goal. Why? Because the truly generational businesses driving lasting impact are almost always public.

The reason boils down to something deceptively simple: public companies have a lower cost of capital. Public markets dwarf private equity markets ($88 trillion vs. $11 trillion globally), making them deeper, more liquid, and cheaper places to raise funds. Simply put, more investors competing means better terms, lower costs, and a bigger strategic toolkit for the companies that list.

Having cheaper capital isn’t just a nice bonus—it’s a powerful strategic advantage. Public companies can afford mistakes, survive downturns, and aggressively chase big, ambitious projects that would bury privately funded competitors. Over time, this lower capital cost creates a compounding competitive advantage, turning good companies into great, enduring ones.

It’s easy to overlook this in the early stages, but growth almost always requires fresh capital. Growing solely from revenue can work, but it’s often painfully slow, an unaffordable luxury in hyper-competitive sectors like tech. Just look at Meta: even as a profitable giant, it raised $10.5 billion in debt last year to fund ambitious AI initiatives. Public companies simply have unmatched flexibility and access to capital for strategic acquisitions and bold moves.

There are two main knocks against going public: short-termism hurting innovation and burdensome reporting. On innovation, academic evidence is mixed, but plenty of studies suggest being public doesn’t necessarily stifle creativity.  In fact, some suggest it can even boost innovation by expanding resources. And honestly, founder-led tech companies tend to ignore short-term market noise anyway. These founders spent years building their vision; a bad quarter isn’t likely to shake their conviction.

As for avoiding reporting hassles by staying private: sure, that’s appealing today. But those private companies are essentially piggybacking on the transparency that public companies provide. Investors in late-stage private rounds rely heavily on publicly listed companies as benchmarks. If too many great businesses stay private, transparency shrinks, benchmarks degrade, and eventually, capital costs rise for everyone.

Bottom line: going public isn’t easy, but it’s still the best way to build a lasting, impactful business.

But why should investors care whether it’s an acquisition or IPO if they’re selling either way? Public market investors typically pay premium valuations at IPOs because they price in a company’s long-term, generational potential. These premiums often translate into one or two additional turns of revenue, or about 22% more than what acquisition counterparts would pay. Moreover, backing companies that grow into generational giants has powerful secondary effects for venture investors. It builds reputation, boosts deal flow, and enhances the fund’s ability to attract future capital and talent. Even though VCs might not hold shares through decades of public growth, investing in future public winners significantly raises their long-term success and influence.

Ultimately, the best founders view their companies as their life’s work and their lasting mark on the world. They’re deeply passionate about solving meaningful market problems and continuing to tackle new challenges as their company grows. That’s true founder-market fit. To keep solving meaningful problems at scale, over decades, these founders typically need the scope and resources of a public company. Palmer Luckey recently made exactly this point regarding a potential Anduril IPO: “We are running this company to be the shape of a publicly traded company. There isn’t really a path for a company like Anduril winning things like an F-35 joint strike fighter contract as a private company.”

At the end of the day, venture investors’ core job is simple: identify and back these ambitious founders and companies that are destined for public markets. Doing so positions investors to capture exceptional returns and sets the stage for genuine, lasting impact.