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Gurley: Thrive Capital pioneered massive tender offers keeping top startups private

Bill Gurley · The Gift and The Curse of Staying Private with Bill Gurley · Invest Like The Best · Jun 10, 2025 · at 24:26

Bill Gurley analyzes how late-stage venture capital firms like Thrive Capital are providing synthetic liquidity to founders and employees so companies can avoid IPOs.

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“I think Josh and the team at thrive have been leading. They're not the only one, but they've been leading the way here where you go at companies that were already on the list to go public that the journal was talking about. They're going to go public next year. And you present them with an offer that I don't know if you want to call it too good to refuse, but something of that nature, you know, and founder liquidity encourages employee liquidity. It might encourage angel liquidity. and you basically encourage the company to stay private.”

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