Why hasn't Stripe IPO'd?

Because it doesn't need to. Stripe has near-unlimited access to capital and raises from venture investors whenever it wants. And it has quietly solved the problem that usually forces a company to IPO: employee liquidity.

I think Stripe is showing what the private market should look like for employees. Roughly every six months, it brings in a group of investors and opens a window for employees to sell. The investors bid, a price is set, and employees who want to sell can. There's no daily stock price for everyone to obsess over, just two liquidity events a year, and every employee knows they're coming.

The founders get something just as valuable: freedom from the quarterly grind. The last thing Patrick and John Collison want is to sit on an earnings call every three months, defending cash flows, ratios and every strategic decision to analysts. Why would they, when patient investors are willing to fund the company on a five- to ten-year horizon?

More companies should follow this model, but most companies can't, and that's where we come in. Stripe's tender offers work because Stripe is Stripe: a household name with investors lined up and a legal team to run each round from scratch. For everyone else, private liquidity is a one-off favor, limited to a few insiders and a buyer pool that stops at the US border. Unblocks turns the Stripe model from a privilege into infrastructure. Every sale is authorized by the company, every position is recorded on its cap table, and the buyers are global investors reached compliantly under Regulation S. Any high-growth company can offer its team regular liquidity windows without a daily stock price or an IPO. And consent, which competitors skip, becomes the moat: platforms that tokenized shares without permission can't go back and get it.

The IPO used to be the only exit. We are unblocking a new one.