There is an enormous difference in how expensive capital is at the startup level vs public company level.
Startups have to convince Angel investors $25k at a time to invest in their startup through a long and laborious sales process. Publicly traded companies just have to issue stock and the market just pays for it out of millions of people's dividend reinvesting 401k plans.
The difference also comes into play in real estate. Putting together the money to do a multi-family apartment building takes lots of talking to banks, personal guarantees, developing relationships over decades with other investors, not hitting a bad market cycle, etc. Once a property becomes worth about $50 million dollars, usually due to a growing economy in the area or the neighborhood becoming more valuable, a REIT will come in and buy it like it's nothing. That's because the REITs have all that public market money to play around with that they get for a much lower cost of capital. The REIT doesn't even have to run it that well because their cost of capital is so low that the profitability requirements for the project are much less. Same thing goes for big tech which has bought hundreds of startups and shut them down or run them poorly.
Startups have to convince Angel investors $25k at a time to invest in their startup through a long and laborious sales process. Publicly traded companies just have to issue stock and the market just pays for it out of millions of people's dividend reinvesting 401k plans.
The difference also comes into play in real estate. Putting together the money to do a multi-family apartment building takes lots of talking to banks, personal guarantees, developing relationships over decades with other investors, not hitting a bad market cycle, etc. Once a property becomes worth about $50 million dollars, usually due to a growing economy in the area or the neighborhood becoming more valuable, a REIT will come in and buy it like it's nothing. That's because the REITs have all that public market money to play around with that they get for a much lower cost of capital. The REIT doesn't even have to run it that well because their cost of capital is so low that the profitability requirements for the project are much less. Same thing goes for big tech which has bought hundreds of startups and shut them down or run them poorly.